
With 5000 apps, Pebble is winning the smartwatch developer war, at least for now - technologizer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3040235/app-economy/pebble-passes-5000-smartwatch-apps-how-it-got-there-and-what-comes-next
======
commandar
>(The split is 1,100 native apps, 4,300 watch faces, and 100 apps that rely on
a companion iOS or Android app, CEO Eric Migicovsky tells Fast Company.)

Read: about 100 apps that actually do anything useful.

I say that as someone that owns and rather likes their Pebble.

~~~
phlyingpenguin
I really enjoyed the next paragraph comparing Pebble's "5,500" apps to
Samsung's 1,000 apps when the truth was just given. Not that it's bad to have
1,000 apps, just that it shows some of the hyperbole that smart watches have
behind them right now.

~~~
ThePimpOfSound
I'm glad someone brought this up. (I'm the author of the FastCo piece.)

I wasn't sure if Samsung's claim of 1,000 apps included watchfaces, so I went
through the Galaxy store and counted them by hand. The results (sections may
be off by a few numbers as I was counting kind of quickly):

108 clocks 11 health 21 finance 211 lifestyle 17 social networking 129
entertainment 171 utilities TOTAL = 668 Note that the actual number is lower,
since several apps were repeated across multiple sections and I didn't
subtract them from the total.

So, Samsung does include watch faces, but the ratio of apps:faces is much
greater. As for the actual number not being 1,000 apps, I'm guessing Samsung
is counting apps for different languages that wouldn't appear in the US store.
I wasn't sure whether to get into this level of hair-splitting in the piece,
but ultimately figured I could get into it more if someone brought it up.

Anyway, I wouldn't really discount the importance of watch faces, especially
on Pebble since they're key to customizing the look of your device. And I
think they'll get more useful with time; Jawbone's app is technically a watch
face, for instance, and some faces can display the weather, battery and
calendars.

I agree that bragging about app count stops being instructive at some point,
but in this case I think they show Pebble has done a fine job of establishing
itself.

Thanks for reading!

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ccozan
Number of apps is not a measure of usefulness or enough for a buy decision. I
have with my Moto 360 a, let say, small number of apps, but quite useful (
Google Now extension, navigation, remote photo trigger, fitness tools, to name
a few). I know that more and more developers will add their wear-enabled apps
and this will increase the functionality. The battery point is a good one, but
while I sleep I have to take any watch off my hand so the point in my case is
kind of moot.

Besides that, who would wear a kids like looking watch? Ok maybe some of us,
but with some good leather straps, the Moto 360 looks really good and somehow
unnoticed, like a normal watch. This gives me some real value, but also I am
not a very young person too ;).

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Fellow 360 owner. The way this is tied to google services is really the value
here. I don't need nor want to launch a dozen apps like some mini-smartphone.
I want pushed updates, voice commands that actually do stuff, etc. I don't
think people yet appreciate how clever AW is. It really is more of an
unobtrusive yet helpful accessory for all the things on my phone than anything
else. Which is exactly what a smartwatch should be.

All this talk about how Tizen on watches will beat AW and how watches will
have their own 4G connection is really off the mark. Its just more mindless
'featuritis.' People want a good experience, not a checklist of features that
suck to use in the real world.

The pebble reminds me of the Treo smartphones before the iphone came out. Sure
it could do stuff, but it wasn't very pleasant and you had to be something of
a techie expert to really make use of it. I'm surprised the pebble people
haven't made an AW watch yet. They have the branding and the know-how. AW is
going to steamroll them if they don't contemporize.

------
turshija
Interesting thing to note about Pebble apps is they made JavaScript framework.
So if you are good with JS, you can get used to PebbleJS quite fast and make
yourself a basic app in few hours! Quite useful if you need something specific
which doesn't exist yet.

[http://developer.getpebble.com/guides/js-apps/pebblekit-
js/](http://developer.getpebble.com/guides/js-apps/pebblekit-js/)

~~~
rlevy
That's not entirely correct - you also must write C code. You can write JS
that runs on the phone and can do stuff like call web services, store data,
and communicate with the watch. But it's old fashioned C code that you need to
have running on the watch in order to render stuff, get sensor data, or
exchange messages with the JS running on the phone.

~~~
IanCal
That's not true, you can write a basic app with a UI entirely in JS. I have
done this to have control over some home automation bits and bobs.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Can we get some links to resources?

~~~
IanCal
There should be plenty on the pebble dev site, but here's the start to a
tutorial that'll build a weather app entirely in js
[http://developer.getpebble.com/getting-started/pebble-js-
tut...](http://developer.getpebble.com/getting-started/pebble-js-
tutorial/part1/)

------
post_break
I don't care how many apps it has. I can ask my android wear device what my
calendar is like, or send a text, or ask to see the weather. I think a lot of
people see more functionality out of android wear.

~~~
rmxt
Maybe functionality is in the eyes of the beholder... but Pebble can most
definitely do all of those things with the proper app: view calendars/agendas,
send canned SMS responses, and view upcoming weather. You don't have to "ask"
your device to do it, just press the right buttons. Despite the "coolness"
factor, I find it preferable and more discreet to press buttons, rather than
using a microphone or swiping a touchscreen. Depending on the app, you can
literally cycle through the three things you've mentioned in three button
clicks. [1] Also, if Pebble has a killer feature, it's that its battery life
crushes anything else I've seen thus far, regularly lasting through 5 to 7
days of 24/7 wear and bluetooth connectivity...I don't think any Android Wear
device can do that yet, but I would be really interested in looking at them if
they could.

[1]
[http://www.finebyte.co.uk/?page_id=9](http://www.finebyte.co.uk/?page_id=9)

EDIT: FWIW, I don't use Google Now on my phone itself, so I admit that some of
the novelty or utility of what it can do from your Android Wear device might
be lost on me.

~~~
sourdesi
I have a Pebble Smartwatch and it definitely does not have 5-7 days of battery
life. More like 1.5 days (2 if your lucky). Also, I do think the fact that
Android wear makes so much functionality so easily accessible is a huge deal
for smartwatches. You just say "Ok Google". The whole point of a smartwatch is
to seamlessly integrate technology in your life. That means our interactions
on them need to be quick. You can't get that if you have to poke around the
Pebble watch UI for 15 seconds before getting to your app and THEN sending out
the text, or checking your calendar etc.

~~~
rmxt
Unlike the sibling posts, I have automatic backlight turned off and it
regularly lasts a minimum of 5 days. On the fifth or sixth night, I charge it
over night and I'm back at it.

With respect to "OK Google," more often than not, I find myself in places
where talking to my watch would strike me as obnoxious: the office, outdoors,
the subway, an elevator. Sure it's quick, but again, a button press or two
strikes me as being more effective in those situations. I really would only
think of using voice commands in my own home, or in the car. I guess it's all
a matter of personal preference... I know exactly how the UI of the Pebble app
works, and exactly what it's going to do in a certain amount of time when I
press a particular button, which feels pretty seamless to me.

Lest I only say good things about Pebble, I have to mention that in a little
over a year of ownership I'm on my 4th one: 3 RMAs due to persistent screen
defects. This 4th one should be sent back, too, but I've yet to get around to
the RMA process again. Two of the RMAs were within 1 year of purchase, and one
was beyond, so my credit goes to their customer service.

------
programminggeek
So far the Moto 360 is the only smart watch for sale that I think I'd want on
my wrist. It looks like a cool watch. I don't think I'd use the apps or
anything a whole lot, but I think that it'd be a nice enough looking watch to
wear around.

I think that tech people are overestimating the potential of wearables as
useful tech. There isn't much a smart watch does for you that you couldn't
pull out your phone and do.

However, the whole reason smart watches exist is to increase the LTV of a
customer. When you are selling a $200-600 phone, selling a $200+ watch is a
nice bump in LTV.

Apple's interchangeable bands is not just to make the manufacturing process
cheaper and more efficient, it's also to make it so you can buy multiple bands
to match different outfits. I know some people who own tons of Chuck Taylor
shoes of different colors to match every outfit they own. Same kind of deal.

In many ways, wearable tech is less about tech and more about fashion
businesses. Fashion is a great business because it's disposable. Disposable
things get repurchased.

Phones are disposable, laptops are disposable, all of it is disposable and
that is almost like a form of recurring revenue. Devices as a service in a
way. The push for all of this is driven by profit, not by much else.

------
whoisthemachine
The pebble team have done a great job, but I think increasing the 8 apps limit
would really help.

It would also make things very interesting if they could release a color
version that achieved similar battery life.

------
hsshah
Yeah. I really like Pebble. YMMV but for my needs its perfect. I want
important notifications 'on my wrist'; so I can put the phone away during
family time (when daughter is around). And the basic screen (no bright colors
or touch sensitive) works great as daughter lost interest in it after 2 mins!

I just wish they develop true wireless/cordless charging using something like
ambient light, hand motion or whatever so I don't have to charge it every few
days!

------
rab_oof
Eric showed off their mobile-based "app store" before it was released. The
cool part is it could download a new watch personality over BT _without
internet access_. So it could operate with cached watch apps if you're out of
cell reception.

(I still have my Alerta that was hand-delivered.)

------
Rygu
Well if "Pebble" is a platform and iOS is a platform, my bet is that Apple
already won this.

~~~
Someone
Apple Watch does not run iOS apps (at the moment).
[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/WatchKitProgrammingGuide/index.html):

 _" Apple Watch requires the presence of an iPhone to run third-party apps.
Creation of a third-party app requires two separate bundles: a WatchKit app
that runs on Apple Watch and a WatchKit extension that runs on the user’s
iPhone. The WatchKit app contains only the storyboards and resource files
associated with your app’s user interface. The WatchKit extension contains the
code for managing the WatchKit app’s user interface and for responding to user
interactions."_

On the other hand, the 5000 is a bit inflated. It is more like 1000 apps and
4000 watch faces.

And of course, the race is still very much on. I would think sales numbers
will be more important than app counts because they will drive app counts up.
In that sense, the "over 400.000 sold" ([http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/pebble-
sold-400000-smartwatche...](http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/pebble-
sold-400000-smartwatches-last-year-on-track-to-double-revenues-in-2014/)) from
last march is better news for Pebble than that 1000 apps.

------
valvar
Does HN think they will release a new version soon, or is it safe to order one
now?

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lectrick
It would be great if it had a heartrate monitor built-in

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serve_yay
The title gave me a good chuckle - thanks.

