Pebble, known for its Pebble smartwatches, had announced Wednesday they got bought by Fitbit (a competitor).
They will stop developing new hardware and they will no longer cover warranties.
While Pebble smartwatches will continue to work for the time being,
it's not guaranteed they will in the future should Google or Apple release a new update.
Pebble was most likely the first company to introduce the concept of smartwatches to the public (widely).
Previous attempts like the first two Sony Smartwatches were timid and did not gain a lot of traction.
(They were also sold in very limited quantities)
The fact it was simple, did not require a phone to work, its retro-style graphics and was a dev friendly platform,
made it popular among some aficionados.
Sadly, Pebble's low sales (100,00-200,000 units) compared to its competitors,
limited availability in local stores, the lack of usefulness thus in putting in question its existence,
combined with the fact smartwatches became a fad like hoverboards (sales this year decreased by 55%),
means that sooner or later, Pebble was condemned to go under.
After the annoncement, Pebble canceled their sucessors and released the last update "Update 17"
to Pebble devices.
Probably Pebble's finest device is the Pebble Time, which comes with a E-ink color screen
and has some interesting retro-style game. (kind of like the Pico-8 actually)
What do you think of Pebble's devices ?
Do you think they were crap and deserved their death ? or you happened to enjoy them?
Another reason why I don't give money to Kickscrewer projects.
I feel bad for
@semiprocoder ._.
Yeah this really sucks. I didn't buy my pebble on kickstarter though. I bought it on amazon for a decent price, but this new deal with fitbit is absolutely terrible. Add to that that fitbit's offer is a LOT less than previous offers from other companies and that just makes this suck. At least they could continue some support for pebble or continue to sell and make them. I feel like this will greatly reduce everyone's confidence in the smartwatch industry and (at least I know I will do this) people will not buy new smartwatches for a while. This is the opposite of what fitbit sais that it wants, as "Fitbit CEO says buying Pebble could help it crack the code on smartwatches" (just the title of the first thing that popped up when I searched up pebble). If fitbit really wanted to do that, then perhaps they could continue to release and develop for pebble. Despite the fact that they had less sales than other smartwatches, they still had a decent core support base. Pebbles have a very long battery life and are easy to develop simple apps for, which is all you need with a smartwatch. The only thing that led to people not liking pebble anymore was that pebble started to focus way too much on health. They were trying to become kind of like fitbit, and, in the end, that ended up killing them with fitbit's acquisition of pebble.
@semiprocoder, thanks for your comment.
Pebble tho actually said they were already bankrupt and Fitbit was basically scavenging the leftovers.
(buying their software, patents and personnels)
So that wasn't really a deal and it's why Pebble had to discontinue its devices and their support as well.
That being said, they plan on releasing an update that would make Pebbles less reliant on external servers
and switching to using Gadgetbridge, which should still allow installing third-party apps/games.
I hope i can make one last Pebble c game before its appstore disappear.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 10, 2016, 08:28:40 PM
Another reason why I don't give money to Kickscrewer projects.
This was not only a successful project, they got funded multiple times and got their products out to the market. It's just an unprofitable company shutting down like any other would.
I agree on that one with Streetwalrus:
They became big and had some products they were selling, it's only afterwards they shut down.
It's no way Kickstarter's fault if a company that started there shuts down long time after it became big ^^
Also There were some quite remarkable projects on Kickstarter over the last years ^^
Quote from: Streetwalrus on December 11, 2016, 07:41:11 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 10, 2016, 08:28:40 PM
Another reason why I don't give money to Kickscrewer projects.
This was not only a successful project, they got funded multiple times and got their products out to the market. It's just an unprofitable company shutting down like any other would.
True, but the issue is that there seems to be more and more Kickstarter/other crowdfunding failures. While the company closed afterwards, some people still pledged hundreds, if not thousands of dollars into the Pebble and other projects, expecting them to work out in long terms. Also many Kickstarter failures involved projects that either never got off the ground, were almost canceled, delayed over and over or were outright scams. The good thing, though, is that I think it's possible to get a refund when such things happen, like on Ebay, but I don't know if Kickstarter is in charge of refunding people and going after bad companies or if it's the companies themselves being forced to refund people or deciding whether they refund people or run away with the money, and when they go out of business then the money is gone.
By the way, did you know that there used to be a semi-calculator usergroup (started by a tempbanned Omni member in early 2014) that banned any discussion about crowdfunding and banned anyone that encouraged or supported crowdfunding? O.O While this was extreme, I can totally understand where the author was coming from, with all those crowdfunded project failures and fiascos. I feel that projects now rely too much on Kickstarter or such other platforms and people with little to no business experience start them. With so many failures I could totally understand if crowdfunding popularity declined drastically in the next few years.
Oh and also, that website that disallowed crowdfunding discussions actually refered to crowdfunding as "crowdcing". I think crowdscamming and Kickscammer are also good synonyms. <_<