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Pebble's next step

blog.getpebble.com

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Re: Pebble's next step

#411

Post by benley »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #176
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem that fitbit would want to retain pebble customers. If they discontinue cloud support for pebble that won't be a good thing

From what I remember, Fitbit has ~30M customers, and Pebble has ~1M. That's just 3% of Fitbit's userbase, so pretty much a rounding error. I don't believe they will care.

I'm pretty sure the pebble cloud services are going to be up and running for the foreseeable future.

source: I do infrastructure stuff at fitbit. Also they explicitly said this in the developer.pebble.com blog post.

Re: Pebble's next step

#412

Post by rtpg »

nepfvkej wrote: post #387
djsumdog wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understanding them selling a lot of IP to Fitbit to pay back their debts and settle bankruptcy, but I really feel all the source for their app/store-services should have been made open source instead, prior to this announcement. That way at least their customers could try to hack together stuff or make mirrors of their app repos to keep their devices functional.

I think you're overestimating how much they value their former customers.

This could also be an issue on Fitbit's side. Open Sourcing all the IP makes the deal less enticing to them (that's the first order analysis, but there's arguments in the other direction too)

Re: Pebble's next step

#413

Post by engi_nerd »

Why do these companies always phrase it as "our next step" or "what we're doing next"? As far as the outside world is concerned, Pebble is dead. There is no "next step". Maybe those same people will go on to work with Fitbit to make similar products, but they are abandoning their existing product.

I hate spin for the sake of public relations.

Re: Pebble's next step

#414

Post by elkos »

twistedpair wrote: post #83
alonsonic wrote: post #47

I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future. If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform. I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stu…

e.g. a pledge to open source the code base if the company folds?

Could such a pledge provide enough assurance? If the company folds its IP is up for grubs, this might include their products source code. Right?

If that's the case I would prefer to purchase devices that are actually already running free software or there is free software available to flash on them.

Person

Re: Pebble's next step

#415

Post by taneq »

mikestew wrote: post #265
captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

I don't want to hit a person while they're down (in the dumps about their "purchase"), but going to Kickstarter for version 3 was my sign to give it a rest on buying Pebbles. Maybe it was just marketing, but it caused me to wonder "have you not made enough profit to support rolling out your third version without outside backing?" If it finally hit retail, great, I might get one then. But in the meantime I bought a Ga…

Totally this. Kickstarter is for, well, kick-starting things. It's not meant to be a business model. If you're already a million-dollar company, and you can't bring a new revision of your product to market without crowdsourced funding, maybe you're not doing it right.

> Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem.

Pebble actually had the full ecosystem going, app store, online integration, accessories, the whole hog. So much so that (for me at least) it was actually a /bad/ thing. I don't want my smartwatch to be a portal into web services and a means of datamining my life. I don't want a subscription to a watch service. I just want it to be a watch that I can program and that can talk to my phone.

Re: Pebble's next step

#416

Post by Jarwain »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #202

I'm sad/angry/depressed as any Pebbler right now, so I won't repeat those comments. Instead, since this is HN after all, let me ask - what shall we do? In a year or two, when my current Pebble Time fails, I'd love an equivalent smartwatch to be available. Since the market doesn't seem to want it, how can we make it happen anyway? Features I'm looking for are, in order of priority: - always-on screen, preferably color…

I was planning on getting the Time Round for myself this Christmas, and I'm pretty bummed that this is happening.

I'd be pretty interested in making something like this happen and figuring it out and leading the charge so-to-speak. It'd be an awesome experience, at the very least. However, I have no experience on the hardware side of things. I'm down to learn, but the software side is what I do have some experience with.

Re: Pebble's next step

#418

Post by tw04 »

jlgaddis wrote: post #379
tw04 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm starting to sound like a fanboy - but it's because I've had other smart watches and it's just so much better . Why not consider garmin? Not sure if their SDK is going to hit the mark as I'm guessing you want complete control and it's definitely not that, but they have everything else you've asked for. https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/sdk/

You've tried several different brands of smart watches and you like Garmin the most? Can I ask what you actually use your smart watch for? I've always had nice wristwatches (and prefer to look at my wrist for the time instead of my phone) but I've been thinking about buying one recently. Most of them seem centered around health / fitness tracking, though, and that's not something I need or want. Mostly, I just want a…

Tracking when I workout, notifications (I carry two phones and during the day my personal phone is in my bag most of the time). And just using it as a watch. I hated that most of the "smart watches" out there would either run out of battery in 8 hours, or have the screen off by default (with a wrist action or a button to enable it).

I don't use the sleep tracking at all, hate having a watch on at night, but the step tracker is fairly accurate and useful.

It's one of those things where I initially bought it for the notifications and the (supposed) battery life. And every now and again I'll find some random new cool use.

Re: Pebble's next step

#419

Post by odbol_ »

captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

Having done a hardware Kickstarter, I can tell you it's not as easy as just "increase the price". Hardware is hard. We did two crowdfunding campaigns: almost broke even on the first one, and are still in massive debt from the second one. Although I'm glad we came through for our backers, I wish we had just refunded everyone. The aftermath has been incredibly stressful both mentally and fiscally.

Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.

Re: Pebble's next step

#420

Post by dreamcompiler »

captainmuon wrote: post #64

I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter. I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble? Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successfu…

It's clear to me that Fitbit bought Pebble to kill it. It was the only smart watch that had good functionality, good battery life, good pricing, and easy user programmability. So of course it had to die. The founders no doubt got a nice payout and the customers, as usual, got forcibly sodomized.
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