The Inside Story Behind Pebble’s Demise

Ugh, I wished there were some way to have relayed this to the Pebble CEO a few years back. I've been through three Pebbles, all of which were backed on Kickstarter. But having to take the Pebble off my wrist to swap with a Garmin before a run made this crystal clear to me: as soon as Garmin (et. al.) puts notifications on their devices, Pebble is done. I knew the barrier was low because I had done similar hands-on work for another large fitness-oriented company. And when I updated my Garmin to one that had notifications and apps, I never put my Pebble on again.

No one wears watches anymore. What would it take to get people to put something on their wrist? Two or three years ago one need look no further than the wrists of one's cow-orkers: fitness trackers. Be it the xTreme d00d who wears his giant Suunto Ambit as a signal, or the office admin who just wants to "lose a few pounds" with a $99 FitBit. I was usually met with indifference as I went on about how nice it was to leave my phone in my pocket all day thanks to Pebble. Until a watch renders Facebook feeds and toots, people are going to take their phones out anyway, at least that's my guess. Take a look at how many phone zombies have an Apple watch on their wrist (my current data are taken from corporate halls of a large multinational that serves caffeinated beverages, so the dataset might be skewed).

Most telling, though, was that the final Kickstarter was because they couldn't get the money another way. Two versions shipped, and they still don't have cash to back the manufacturing of a third? At that point, I'm going to guess that Pebble knew they were done but a "hail Mary" was worth a shot. And like most such plays, it didn't work. They gave it a good go, missed the market a fair bit, but at a minimum I'd say that the team can be credited with getting the ball rolling even if they didn't ultimately benefit from it.