They don't support Spotify, or really any music app except the one (which I don't remember). Their subscription service provides no real value at all. Their devices track heart rate and nothing else. They simply don't innovate at all.
I'm definitely on both sides of the fence.
After Fitbit bought Pebble, they made the ecosystem poorer. The Pebble tech team was stronger than the team that absorbed them.
Fitbit customer service is excellent, but their warranty is bad, and their build quality seems poor.
My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out, and they offered me a 20% discount on my next purchase. They haven't lit up the SiO2 sensor on the Ionic after (3?) years.
Google is great at a lot of things, but how invested are they in being a supplier of a niche, always connected device that collects personal data every second of the ...
Wait a second! Things might be looking up for Fitbit devices! (But maybe not the users)
They said a long way back they were looking into releasing their own - fine. But still no chest-strap!
Chest-strap is required for serious (and safe) training near your peak heart rate - and it's a ton more accurate for regular exercise too.
All the other fitness watches support pretty much any chest-strap you can buy. They've standardized... but not Fitbit.
Not to mention you still can't export exercise data out of Fitbit. Some apps can send data into Fitbit... but good luck getting things out.
I have a Versa 2. They support Pandora.
I have not tried the subscription yet but plan to.
I definitely would like more innovation too, but IMO it’s still the best in class. I switched from the Band after MS discontinued. I had (and returned) an Apple Watch because of lack of good sleep tracking.
And this is enough to justify the device for me. It only cost $150 or so, lasts much longer than a year, and earns its keep in useful functionality.
See the spO2 sensor on the Charge 3 that has been inaccessible since the device launched.
Very cheap device, I see many of them and the Mi Band 4 around here (and Apple watches). Seems to be a saturated market.
I don't really know why they cancelled it but I'm wearing Fitbit flex and later flex 2 since they entered the market and it's a divice that I'm used to wear and forget even when I'm asleep ( compared to the Apple Watch, which nevertheless needs daily charge and is simply too bulky to wear in bed ). I haven't found any decent competitors on that part and I'm honestly afraid of the wasted hours when I have to decide what to use as a replacement.
While this could easily be another money sink for Google as they attempt to figure out some sort of Android wearable, it also has the potential to be an Instagram level-acquisition. Non-Apple wearables seem to be ripe for the picking
The Pebble was worlds better at this, when I used the Versa I was surprised by it. It sells tons even though Wear OS is way ahead.
I did have a charging issue, but it was because I left the charger plugged in inside the bathroom. I guess the steam from showers corroded the charging posts causing them eventually to no longer make contact with the watch. I bought a few replacements from Amazon for <$20 total and started unplugging it when it wasn't charging and I haven't had the issue in years.
"fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me"
Other than having to restart it once or twice to fix the display not working, I haven't had any issues with it.
And Naspers investing into Tencent and Softbank into Alibaba are up there too, though they’re just big minority stake investments.
Your point definitely stands, as a ~3bn market opportunity might not be at the scale of Instagram or Alibaba, but thats some good ROI
Google has murdered every hardware company they've bought, whether it was smarthome products, watches, smartphones, robots, etc.
I specifically bought a Fitbit because it didn't capture my location history (unless using a specific app for tracking running I don't use), and obviously I will have to leave (and stop buying them for friends as well) if Google acquires them.
Funny enough, I have an Aria scale because that's a meaningful metric for me to track long-term.
Good lord, must the acquisition offer feel like a relief? Surely, Fitbit wouldn't do a Groupon now.
The article fails to mention Fossil, but Google recently did acquire their wearables research division for $40M [0]. It looks like Google is gearing up to launch multiple wearables. Xiaomi, Huawei, and Huami have really taken the wearables market by storm [1]. If anything, price differentiation seems to be the key. I hope the rumoured Pixel Wearable isn't comically expensive like its Phone counterparts.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/17/18187026/google-fossil-gr...
[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191017005172/en/Hua...
You link to a press release. Are there actual sales numbers to back that claim up? Because all I see out in the real world are Apple watches and Fit Bits.
> I hope the rumoured Pixel Wearable isn't comically expensive like its Phone counterparts.
The Apple Watch Series 3 is available on apple.com for $199.
Which world? USA? Apple Watch doesn't work outside the Apple ecosystem, and Apple doesn't own the majority of the smartphone market.
Stats for Europe, 2019 https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/10/21/smart-wearables-market...
Apple was pretty stable, Fitbit lost half its market share (to Garmin, looks like), the rest was more or less stable.
Which is still a great value.
Google isn’t buying Fitbit to improve Fitbit, Google is acquiring a company to gain their experience in the wearables space to compete with Apple and Samsung. I suspect Google thinks AppleWatch is helping them erode the Android market share and/or preventing switchers from moving to Pixel.
I imagine they're also interested simply as a defensive move: if they don't buy fitbit, maybe samsung or apple does.
> Fitbit would not be the first deal that Google would be carrying out in the wearables space. Fossil Group Inc said in January it would sell its intellectual property related to smartwatch technology under development to Google for $40 million. Google’s plans for these assets are not clear.
Whilst the Fossil app is great the actual bluetooth reliability has gone downhill with the latest updates and I'm wondering whether it is related to talent moving to Google.
That's a trend in computing. It's forever too hard, until all of a sudden it isn't for a very select few and they do amazing things[1]. Then a year or two later everyone is doing it.
1: Amazing is relative, and in this case may be less about customers getting something amazing and more about to the execs looking at amazing profit reports...
Anyway, Health is the next up and coming tech market. That's why Amazon just acquired Health Navigator and is rolling it up under Amazon Care (https://amazon.care/). Google [Alphabet] isn't just going to leave money on the table (and healthcare is lotsa lotsa money)
Could opting into an app that uses heartbeat for non-health purposes (ex. music game with biofeedback) open the door legally for them to use the data for other non-health purposes?
I have stopped using all google services except for search and YouTube. Apple Maps is fine now, if you need a free email account, you can get one on iCloud.com.
Who are these soulless marketing execs that are OK with using this type of extremely personal health data!? There should be a moral objection, which evidently isn’t there. That’s more horrifying.
This is now the new normal. Pretty sure whatever is now weird will soon be normal too, given a spreadsheet or two to push it through.
(Heinlein was not nearly imaginative enough about the Crazy Years, no one could be. Might as well blame him for not thinking of the "Walk on Your Hands" thing.)
I doubt that knowing what time you sleep, when you exercise, and your hearth rate can add a lot more risks. Maybe the hearth rate combined with what you are doing on your phone can be used to measure the effect of what you are reading or watching...
I'm fairly confident this will eventually happen, as I had a professor explain to me that he wears a fitness tracker in exchange for a premium reduction. I think the incentive of the insurance company is that they found individuals wearing these devices to be more conscientious of their own health (I don't think they request any data at this point).
Even if you don't partake, these risk models will certainly generalize your demographic to their set of data.
From the Ad-revenue perspective, it's easy to see how they could target you for selling melatonin if your sleep pattern supports it. Or, maybe you're active, which brings about plenty of products to target you for.
Even if my watch is connected to my phone, if my phone isn't connected to the internet, I can't get the data off of it!
I’m not sure how Android holds up but it should be possible to achieve something similar there, I’d guess. On Android there are third party Apps for syncing which should make things easier.
Pros: * Mi Band 4 is very cheap * Reliable HR, steps, activity & sleep tracking * Easy and quick setup * > 20 days battery life * Custumizable watch faces * 5ATM water resistant
Cons: * Xiaomi and Huami are Chinese companies * No always on display (but raising watch turns on display) * Some data could leak should the firewall fail * Currently no third party Apps for syncing to iOS
I wrote a short article about using the Mi Band 4 on iOS with a focus on privacy on my website if you’d like to know a bit more.
They have more or less stated that general availability is just waiting on someone who already has one to demonstrate a useful app. That is they could sell the hardware today, but since it won't do anything it is useless and so they see no point.
I'd be interested to know what and how much it shares info too and if it's safe against things like wifi MitM attacks.
I loved my Pebble OG and kept searching for a nice secondhand Pebble Time Steel to upgrade to -- until the Fitbit acquisition where we learned the Pebble ecosystem was unfortunately doomed.
I've since "upgraded" to an Apple Watch S4, but to be honest it's really just a "side-grade" as there are major downsides compared to the Pebble OG, like battery life, lack of always-on display, and the lack of useful tactile buttons.
Being able to switch the currently-playing music track _without having to look at it_ is one thing the Apple Watch can never provide for me. I have to look, see where the UI button is, and tap on exactly the right spot on the screen. It frequently doesn't recognize that I tapped on the fwd/next track button either (presumably because I didn't tap perfectly within the hitbox). This hugely defeats the purpose of a subtle wearable that can stay "out of the way" and not steal your attention.
The team that built Pebble built the FitbitOS ecosystem. They have done incredible work and did it even better the second time around.
Disclosure: I am a former Fitbit employee.
Oh, regardless, thanks for giving your $0.02, cool to hear from someone who worked there! :)
Have you looked into Garmin's watches? Granted, they're expensive, but these are some of the main reasons I love my fenix. (In addition to it functioning as a very capable bike computer.)
When logging in I noticed there's a consent form the I was auto redirected from. Presumably this is for EU customers only and fitbit don't want to give the rest of the world privacy options.
I do feel silly giving them this data in the first place though, it's not enough to trust a company, you have to trust who they will be sold too as well.
This is new. Is "hostile" referring to a data format that has been created to be as un-portable as possible? Feels like a more accurate description would be to just saw "poorly designed format" as you cannot know their intent (unless they published their intent of course)
Is there a comparable non-google device that does sleep tracking? My garmin watch is not a great replacement in that regard.
My biggest need was for a "silent" wakeup alarm since I get up so much earlier than my fiance. It does sleep tracking and a lot of phone features that I don't use.
The two biggest wins are (1) the price, and (2) the battery life. I paid like $40 for the watch, and $20 for a better band on Amazon. The battery on my MiBand2 lasted ~month and a half. The MiBand 3 is shaping up to be much less, but still 3-4 weeks between charges.
It was reported last month that Fitbit engaged Qatalyst for a sale. I wonder who leaked the news to Reuters, which did not mention a price: was it Qatalyst, hoping to start a bidding war?
Garmin has their own growth. In fact, Garmin is the only wearable market that I've noticed growing in the last 3-4 years (Apple is gaining traction obviously, but the Apple Watch is only a small bit of their market). Fitbit is failing, they're in desperate need of an acquisition.
If you own a Garmin watch (Forerunner line for example), you'll understand. It has all the fitness tracking of a Fitbit, an always-on color display, best in class GPS, and several days/a week of battery life. And, their luxury watches are really uncontested for the mountain/marine/extreme market. Frankly, the build quality is better than much of the market as well. The software is less than Apple, but better than Fitbit.
The wearable market is becoming narrower and narrower, and I really think it will come down to Apple, Google and Garmin.
In the wearable space, Apple and Google make flashy gadgets, essentially. This is great for the business people/casuals. But Garmin is capturing a whole different market. I don't see many competitors in the athletic (marathon, triathlete, ironman) market, and even less so in the extreme (mountain, marine exploration) market.
Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt though, I got my whole family hooked on Garmin devices, myself coming from their line of bike GPS. I've also invested in Garmin for several years now.
For example, they have an aviation division which produces radars and glass cockpits for government and defense. If they were having trouble with their consumer lines (which by all appearances seem to be thriving) they might spin it off and sell it, but the whole company seems a bad match for an Alphabet acquisition.
Google wants the brand.
Their watches though popular are completely self sustained, as in not connected devices. No link to the phone, cannot install Android on them most likely. So they are buying it purely for their experience making watches and not for their products.
Also, I wonder how much Google will want to invest in devices that are not connected to their ecosystem and might neglect existing products which will simply dilute the brand. Could be a good thing for Fit though, as I don't see that as a growing business over time.
wut? being linked to your phone is literally the whole point of a fitbit. it syncs your recorded fitness data back to the phone, and displays notifications from the phone on your wrist.
It is absolutely about the brand. Fitbit sells like hotcakes despite that their product is remarkably bad compared to others. (The versa is rather badly rated.)
The story here is Google buying them, throwing WearOS on them/a google watch with Fitbit branding, and EOLing the entire Fitbit lineup.
Either that changes and Fitbit is tied into the ecosystem (which sucks because I like Fitbit as it is), or the brand (and its products die) as the engineers are put to work building something else.
That said Google has Android Wear and a whole line of watches already so I also don't see the benefit except to squash some competition.
Convince me this isn't just a distraction and fad with little benefit, besides being an advertising device on your wrist to inform others that you value fitness.
EDIT: OK, looks like everyone here is convinced of the benefits- I'm pretty much on my own in my skepticism, I guess.
There are just a lot of useful, small benefits that easily justify using one. I can easily go without though, so it's not a must-have. If you don't need that kind of detail in your life, just skip the whole thing. I'll sometimes go months without wearing it.
I don't think there's a "killer app" or a "convincing" argument. Rather, either it aligns with your goals and needs or it doesn't.
I got an Amazfit Bip (super cheap, with GPS and HRM). I lift (heavy, 5/3/1 style) and trail run.
In short: steps are usually an indication of the aggregate of other things in your life. I leave my goal setting at 8K steps/day. On a 3-4 mile run day, I get it out of the way first thing. Some gym days are good for about 2000 steps.
On other days, I find that I am near the end of the day and I've literally managed all of 500 steps (working at the desk).
I do have more awareness of my distribution of steps/activity throughout the day. If I hit my 8K steps by 7am and have 9K steps at dinner, I know I was pretty sedentary all day.
I like to see 4000 steps at lunch, and 4000 steps at dinner, etc. Getting steps also gets me off the couch if I'm having a lazy day, gets the dog longer dog walks because I see an indicator of what I could give to her, etc etc.
With a busy schedule, hitting 8K steps EVERY SINGLE DAY takes work at least a few days each week. Sometimes my girlfriend needs another 2000 steps for her day, so I go with her too. It's a plus and we get that extra intentional time together. I personally welcome the quantified nudge, and it keeps me and my family out of the ditches of laziness and that lead to more gym, runs, hikes, etc.
I think it would be hard to argue that it DOESN'T make you more fit? If you normally have say 500 steps in a day, and the FitBit convinces you (through gamification, visibility into the metrics, or whatever it may be) to now take 2,000 steps in a day, then it's not a "feeling like they are more fit", it will indeed make them more fit (assuming nothing else were to change). The health benefit in 2,000 steps vs 500 steps is probably pretty cut and dry.
I think it's good if you're otherwise committed to improving on one of those things, but wearing it it wont help you any more than buying dumbbells and leaving them unused int he attic.
I'd love to see the Pebble hardware running Android Wear (maybe fixed by Fitbit to last longer) with Pixel branding. I'm hopeful.
That's the really impressive achievement of Pebble. They built a smartwatch software platform that was orders of magnitude more efficient than Apple or Google, but still a joy to use. That efficiency gave them the flexibility to make hardware design choices (e.g. 7 day battery or 7.5mm thickness or $99 price) that Google or Apple could never make.
I actually think google would benefit from differentiating their consumer tech from their search/adwords products.
I'd be really excited to see something similar in a more traditional watch form factor.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14703108/fitbit-bought-pe...
Huami Amazfit Bip comes close, but has no apps and needs touch input to function (no music control either). It does measure your pulse and last 30+ days, though.
I would easily pay hundreds of € for the best of those watches with an open source OS.
But instead manufacturers stick to touch operated OLED screen watches that last no more than a few days, with Android Wear ones often not even lasting 1.
Dude, why?
It's a fantastic smart-ish watch.
Only thing it's really missing is the always-on display and native apps (they have javascript apps instead).
FWIW!
When is the U.S. going to get proper user data protections?
There are massive potential benefits to mass medical data collection and analysis. From early detection and prevention of epidemics to individualized, detailed, precise medical advice (e.g. you, specifically, might be fine eating lots of fat, but have an obscure risk factor involving, say, olives or almonds or something.)
To me it seems clearly insane to give that much power to such a relatively unaccountable entity.
There's a competitor to Fitbit and one thing coming down their pipeline can detect blood alcohol level. They are about to enter a market in a staunchly Muslim nation. See the potential for problems?
Anyhow, I was actually hoping Microsoft would buy them, and make an assistant agnostic device that could run Google, Alexa or Cortana.
They are buying (a lot of) data and a list of customers. They don’t care about the app code.
It's the only wearable brand other than Apple Watch that has any traction whatsoever with consumers.
I bet there is no option to download my data and nuke what they have before this happens either.
Are you based in the EU? If so then you can do exactly that under GDPR.
This is health data we're talking about
I get that some folks like a "track" they can refer to, for others it puts their life at risk[1], and for me its not something I care about. Steps and heart rate are enough for it to compute calories (when you've added in lean body mass and sex). There are no features "missing" when I only sync it to an old Motorola X phone (no sim) which is sitting at my desk. I noticed that Apple and Fitbit have also fought over this, where on iDevices enabling location was optional (it would still sync), then an update and the location was no longer optional (unhelpful "no device found" message, but turn on location and amazingly there is your device right there, turn it off and poof your device is no where to be seen), then with the iOS 13 update it was optional again. But on Android it has never been optional.
I interpreted that behavior as "profitability through data sales" strategy and they needed more data cows to get more money.
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/marshmallow/and...
Fitbit: the grim reaper of wearables.
After watching what happened to Nest I don't see how any current owner would be excited. I saw a newer, lower priced version released and being forced over to Google services. They used the brand and likely the team to develop more products, but none of them seem very compelling. They're all fairly identical to products other companies make.
If you have an android device, no explanation needed. If you use an iPhone, unless you abstain from Google products completely, they have it from maps, wifi AP MACs, etc.
Their Bluetooth stack is sooo broken. The devices cannot sync if there are other Bluetooth devices around or only some very specific phones are supported.
Their forums are FULL of complains for the hardware breaking (ex: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge/Fitbit-charge-battery... - https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge/Charge-band-falling-a... - https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge/Button-fell-off-my-ch... ) and updates that brick the devices (one of the recent examples: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Ionic/Fitbit-OS-4-0-2-Firmwa... )... nevertheless people still buy them.
I think the only good things Fitbit has may be the community and that it is not easier to replicate.
I guess Google can buy the company at a bargain price. They could fix up the technical/process problems, create good devices and use the FitBit brand to sell to their user base.
Because most people do not research a product before buying it. They just go to the store and pick the one with the nicest box and price.
"By requesting your account to be deleted, you will no longer be able to login. Your data will be permanently deleted after a 7 day grace period. Coach Premium plans will also get deleted."
That said, they ought to do Google auth integration as it's really annoying to maintain a separate Nest account for those products.
That's honestly my first thought reading this. I lost my faith in Google about these sort of things.
Putting a 3G modem in my watch is the antithesis to what I see most people asking for - a watch that can actually last more than 24 hours without having to charge it.
When my phone lasts longer than my watch, there is something fundamentally wrong.
Hopefully this purchase will result in some half-decent Android smart watches - that I’ll never purchase anyways because Google - but for those willing to sell their data out at least they will have the option to do so on decent hardware and hopefully software.
Sleep tracking is another area in which fitbit is one of the best, if not the best among peers.
Now it seems they were deliberately making sure they had your data so they could (in effect) sell it.
I’ve held off on an Apple Watch for the longest time due to battery life and size, but it seems like that is now the only option. You can’t trust any company to have access to your data.
The heart rate monitor was so bad I returned it to the store in less than 24 hours.
If Apple would play nice with PCs and let you type texts from Windows I'd ditch the Android.
I refuse to give Google any money.
Did that whole company just flop so they decided to go out and buy FitBit?
Garmin's products are much better, but they have a big range outside the wearables market.
Edit: I guess Android Wear does work with iOS, so maybe I'm being overly concerned about this aspect.
More like: the source "leaked" to create negotiation pressures...
> Alphabet in bid to shut down Fitbit in two years
When you own Fitbit, you own the category.
Ah-ha google, you didn't think i saw where you were heading did you, eh!?! /s
After an unsuccessful foray into Android watches a few years ago, I finally broke down and got a $15 remaindered Fitbit Flex on Ebay. It was advertised as "new/other", but the battery is obviously shot and doesn't hold a charge longer than a day or two, so they refunded my money.
But I still wear it occasionally, to understand the user experience, despite the inconvenience of needing to charge it every day. It's a clever design and does one thing pretty well -- recording your motion and sync'ing to your phone when in Bluetooth range.
For a while I toyed with investing more in a new Fitbit that would capture heart rate, but given how much better Apple watches are both in build quality and likelihood of remaining in business, I think I'll just hold out for one of those, for when I switch from Android to an iPhone 11 or 12 next autumn.
Though, Google might reinvigorate Fitbit, who knows. But Google also shelves products with distressing frequency so it might be a meaningless acquisition. Fitness trackers have become a commodity, with a few high end quality offerings from Samsung and others, Fitbit struggling to retain its market leader status, and dozens of Chinese knock-offs in the $8-$20 range that are mediocre but the price is right.