
Fitbit to Buy Pebble - hurrycane
http://go.theinformation.com/dfNa4p4B_IY
======
hurrycane
Unfortunately behind a pay-wall.

Full text:

Fitbit, the leader in the fitness band market, is near a deal to acquire
smartwatch maker Pebble, according to three people briefed on the deal.

The price couldn’t be learned but it is thought to be for a small amount.
Pebble had been looking to sell, one of the people said. There have been signs
over the past year or so that Pebble was facing financial challenges. Earlier
this year it reportedly laid off about a quarter of its workforce.

THE TAKEAWAY The expected sale of Pebble to Fitbit signals a consolidation in
the wearables market.

The Pebble brand will be phased out after the deal. What Fitbit will get is
Pebble's intellectual property, such as its operating system, one of the
people said.

The deal signals a consolidation in the wearables space, which has been
crowded with several players including Apple and Jawbone. Pebble burst onto
the scene several years ago with a flashy Kickstarter campaign that drew
interest from consumers. But it struggled to gain traction.

Pebble burst onto the scene several years ago with a flashy kickstarter
campaign that drew interest from consumers. Fitbit, which went public last
year, has had its own issues. Its stock price which has fallen from a peak of
$49 in August of last year to roughly $8 today, giving it a market cap of
$1.87 billion. The company recently reported net income fell 61% to $43.5
million in the nine months to Oct. 1, despite a 39% increase in revenue to
$1.6 billion. Fitbit's main product is fitness bands but it sells what some
have called a smartwatch, pitting it directly against Apple's watch.

Meanwhile, Jawbone, another maker of wearable devices, has also struggled in
the past year or two and had looked for a buyer, without success.

Source:
[http://go.theinformation.com/dfNa4p4B_IY](http://go.theinformation.com/dfNa4p4B_IY)

~~~
k__
Somehow this whole startup thing often puzzles me.

I read good things about RethinkDB, bad things about MongoDB and almost
nothing about ArangoDB. But Rethink closes shop, Mongo is used everywhere and
Arango gets big funding.

Same with Pebble, read only good things about them, now they sell for a "small
amount".

