Fitbit Acquires Vector Watch

[Guest Kloaked]

SAUCE: http://www.androidauthority.com/fitbit-acquires-smartwatch-maker-vector-watch-742208/

 

Good evening friends and fam. 'Member when Fitbit bought Pebble? I didn't think too much about it since Pebble wasn't super huge, but now it's looking like Fitbit is buying out any competitor that they can. At least on the surface it seems like that.

 

Fitbit appears to be on a shopping spree. After acquiring Pebble last month, the company has now also bought the UK-based smartwatch maker Vector Watch, which was founded in 2015.

 


Vector Watch is best known for making great looking smartwatches like the Vector Luna and Vector Meridian, which feature a monochrome screen display, a fully stainless steel case, an impressive 30-day battery life, and are compatible with all the major mobile operating systems including Android. The smartwatches also come in a variety of colors and are water resistant up to 50 meters.

 

30-day battery life?

 

 

I have a Fitbit Charge 2 and it lasts about 5-7 days depending on my activity. 30 days sounds insane but it's also probably due to it just being a watch and not a fitness band that tracks your constant activity and heart rate.

 

The bad news:

 

In a blog post, the company announced that its smartwatches will continue to function, but won’t receive any new software updates from now on. Developers are not able to develop new streams for the devices, however, they can still edit the ones they have already published.

 

If you own a Vector watch... GG. I mean, I dunno what updates you'd really need to tell time and other basic smartwatch functionality, but y'know.
 
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[Guest]

Yeah I remember that time when Fitibit bought Pebble

[Wyzzy Moon]

Pebble wasn't really a competitor. And these guys also just made watches. So basically they're buying out all 3th party smartwatch makers so either there making a watch themselfs or they are just stupid and are forcing us to buy an Apple or an Android watch. Because I am not going to buy a fitbit to replace my pebble if it dies.
 

[Guest Kloaked]

Just now, Wyzzy Moon said:

Pebble wasn't really a competitor. And these guys also just made watches. So basically they're buying out all 3th party smartwatch makers so either there making a watch themselfs or they are just stupid and are forcing us to buy an Apple or an Android watch. Because I am not going to buy a fitbit to replace my pebble if it dies.
 

I don't get why they have to buyout these companies to make an actual smartwatch unless they're after specific patents that these companies have.

[Bouzoo]

@Kloaked Your posts are as classy as ever. 

 

3 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Yeah I remember that time when Fitibit bought Pebble

Because that time was a month ago. 

[Guest]

Just now, Bouzoo said:

@Kloaked Your posts are classy as ever. 

 

Because that time was a month ago. 

No because I posted it

[Bouzoo]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

No because I posted it

That works as well I guess. 

[Wyzzy Moon]

1 minute ago, Kloaked said:

I don't get why they have to buyout these companies to make an actual smartwatch unless they're after specific patents that these companies have.

I don't get it at all, they don't even have a product that competes with a smartwatch directly. And FitBit has been around for a while so I can't imagine that pebble or vectorwatch for that matter had amazing fitness pattens. So I guess they could prepair to make there own smartwatch and buy out competitors in advance.

[Guest]

I feel like Michael Fisher will get irritated seeing the news; he practically made a video about the Vector watch replacing the Pebble 

 

 

FitBit is either buying out potential competition for a new product or a whole new product line based of smartwatches with long battery lives, assuming that's the reason for buying Vector and Pebble, will be released

[potoooooooo]

Fitbit doesn't make any good smartwatches so they buy companies who make good ones.

[dizmo]

Makes sense. Why invest a ton of money into R&D when you can buy companies that already have experience doing it?
Very, very common practice. I mean look at the whole Microsoft Nokia deal.

 

I'm pretty excited about this, I have a Charge 2 and having something a little more in the watch category would be interesting. Hopefully they can compete with the battery life that the new Samsung watches get. Still not entirely sure I'd go to a smart watch from a regular watch, but with the right design...

 

2 hours ago, Kloaked said:

I don't get why they have to buyout these companies to make an actual smartwatch unless they're after specific patents that these companies have.

It's cheaper than going through several prototypes, hiring new people that may or may not work out, etc etc.

These companies weren't exactly expensive.

2 hours ago, Wyzzy Moon said:

I don't get it at all, they don't even have a product that competes with a smartwatch directly. And FitBit has been around for a while so I can't imagine that pebble or vectorwatch for that matter had amazing fitness pattens. So I guess they could prepair to make there own smartwatch and buy out competitors in advance.

Really? The FitBit Blaze is basically a smartwatch.

Wouldn't the fact that you think they don't have a direct smart watch competitor make more sense that they're buying companies that do just that?

[Trixanity]

25 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I mean look at the whole Microsoft Nokia deal.

You mean buying out the competition and dismantling everything and then proceed to sell off the majority of what you bought because you only wanted a few bits and pieces from the company anyway whilst killing off anything resembling what you acquired?

 

Sounds about right.

 

Either Fitbit is very serious and want to make a great 'classic' design smartwatch with a fairly rich ecosystem like Pebble's that has a long battery life and a screen that actually works outdoors or they just wanted some patents and software stuff to advance their fitness trackers a little bit and anyone that wants to see the lovechild of a Fitbit/Pebble/Vector product can fuck off.

[dizmo]

6 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

You mean buying out the competition and dismantling everything and then proceed to sell off the majority of what you bought because you only wanted a few bits and pieces from the company anyway whilst killing off anything resembling what you acquired?

 

Sounds about right.

 

Either Fitbit is very serious and want to make a great 'classic' design smartwatch with a fairly rich ecosystem like Pebble's that has a long battery life and a screen that actually works outdoors or they just wanted some patents and software stuff to advance their fitness trackers a little bit and anyone that wants to see the lovechild of a Fitbit/Pebble/Vector product can fuck off.

It's not like they bought all of Nokia. They didn't even buy the entire mobile division, only the smart phone division.

Hmm, you mean they bought the company, then used it the way they desired? Shocking! How else should it have played out?

 

Pebble was going to die whether it was bought or not, and apparently Vector didn't do as well as they'd hoped either.

 

[Trixanity]

4 minutes ago, dizmo said:

It's not like they bought all of Nokia. They didn't even buy the entire mobile division, only the smart phone division.

Hmm, you mean they bought the company, then used it the way they desired? Shocking! How else should it have played out?

 

Pebble was going to die whether it was bought or not, and apparently Vector didn't do as well as they'd hoped either.

 

Well, all I can say is luckily I didn't have a vested interest in either Nokia, Pebble or Vector. With that being said the customers of these companies are getting screwed over and a lot of the employees are getting screwed over especially those at Nokia; what was it? 20000 employees that were laid-off? One would have to be quite the character to think that's fine.

 

Also, they did buy Nokia's entire phone business including feature phones. They just sold that part off fairly quickly because fuck that.

 

One would hope that they would use their acquisition for something other than a patent-grab followed my termination. That's how most would want it to play out other than shareholders I suppose. 

 

And yes, of course Pebble was gonna die. It was totally mismanaged. There are plenty of articles about that on the internet. That and the wearable business still doesn't have a firm foundation so many companies will go under if they can't find a steady income fast so that hurts both Pebble and Vector.

 

The act of buying companies and shutting down their business is all too common. It's nothing new. It happens all the time. And it pisses people off all the time as well. People hope it's a good thing but it's usually always a bad thing. For example, one would have liked to see Fitbit make a Pebble-like product but better. Is that going to happen? Highly unlikely. Because it doesn't seem like there is any intent to take what they bought and integrate it into the company properly (and they obviously didn't buy Pebble and allow it to continue to exist; that ship has sailed). Ultimately, it seems like they just want the Pebble guys to make them an app store and that's it. Fitbit will remain the exactly the same except there is an app store now. Yay! That's what I call innovation. That's only a small part of what Pebble had to offer so Pebble's customers can't look forward to getting a spiritual successor.

 

They could use these acquisitions to make great products but they won't. It's too risky. Besides, their current products obviously sell really well anyway.

[dizmo]

20 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

-snip-

 

I agree, mostly. However there are a lot of circumstances where a decent chunk of employees are kept. What's better, have the company go completely bust, and everyone losing their jobs, or having a buy out and have some kept on?

Fitbit, for example, is keeping a large number of Pebbles employees.

 

Really, what more was Pebble than an app store, aside from their device, which Fitbit already makes arguably better versions of? Not much. They released a whopping 3 devices over 4 years.

 

Fitbit labels themselves as a digital healthcare and fitness company, so to think they'd do anything else would be foolish.

However, that said, with an app store others can focus on expanding them into more.

[rattacko123]

Just as long as Fitbit makes an e-ink display smartwatch with 7-day battery life that is ~$200 USD then I will be happy.

No wonder the vector watches were sold out on amazon, the company was being bought!

[Stefan1024]

Hmmm why do I only get to know this companies when they are bougth and closed? Would have probably bougth one of those : (