As the 2016 market has shown, "need" is perhaps too strong a word for a smart watch.
'Failing' in what sense?
《Edit》honestly I read the whole article, please explain how this makes sense from a fitbit perspective.
~60 engineers and managers retained as part of acquisition. 1 left before acquisition was final. ~15 left before 1 year cliff. ~30 left within 6 months after the cliff. ~15 are still there after 2 years.
There was a company wide layoff a few months after the 1 year cliff. The acquired teams weren't hit as hard, because it was understood that people would leave on their own.
It feels like I'm starting to like a market and it dies. Like watching Firefly after the show was long cancelled. Back to bare wrists for me, alternatives do not exist. :(
Yeah, this feels just like firefly :(
They were the only smartwatch manufacturer that could claim anything close to 10 days of battery life. They were the only smartwatch manufacturer that made devices that were water resistant and really meant it. (That is, they're all rated to 3-5 ATM and tested the same way regular watches are, you can actually use them in chlorinated or salt water, and they didn't try to claim that your "water resistant" device's warranty was void if you got it wet.) They were the only smartwatch manufacturer that made devices that had an always-on display that's actually any good (with the possible exception of the just-released Gear S3; I've yet to see one in person but it sounds like Samsung are getting there). It's a small thing, but they were also the only smartwatch manufacturer that didn't take themselves too seriously, filling their UI with cute icons and animations that made the watch fun to use. All that, and their products were significantly more affordable than some of their competition.
My Suunto can go weeks between charges (with GPS not in use). Even with full feature usage, it's supposed to go 200+ hours.
My quick perusal of Suunto's site seems to indicate their watches are more like a fancy fitbit then a smart watch.
1. Others can't acquire and sue them
2. They can sue others if needed
Other than IP, it's hard to justify their spend in acquiring the company (they already have hardware and software/app).
To be fair, I don't think Pebble was aspiring to be acquired by Fitbit for their IP. They turned down a huge acquisition offer, presumably on the notion of getting bigger. This was just a fire sale which barely returned money to debt holders (and maybe some to investors).
Same thing with Coin. In fact, Fitbit only acquired a portion of that company.
Very interesting how they're treating their $33mm kickstarter obligation. [Edit: sorry, I wasn't sure what had been fulfilled already, thanks skuhn]
Doing some quick math, it looks like they plan to refund $9,650,775 (plus any amount people pledged above the minimum threshold for a given pledge tier). Of course they're returning the full value on money they received after Kickstarter's 10% cut. They would have only received about $8,700,000.
