Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit
reuters.com
reuters.com
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...
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.
If you don't mind having a watch that is mostly for doing watch things, and then charging it every night - Fossil is nice. But I would look elsewhere if you want a smart watch for daily use doing "smart" things.
Their bluetooth stack seems rock solid. Especially coming from Garmin where intermittent issues were the norm for me.
I'm only interested in 4 things: counting steps, getting calendar notifications, getting call notifications and getting text notifications.
Steps counting and syncing works without issues, calendar events work without issues. Text and call notifications stopped working for me altogether.
Basically, it either works really well or not at all.
I'd be willing to invest time into this to get it to work, but their support is not much help. It doesn't go beyond checklist and "have you tried re-pairing and enabling all permissions".
It's a shame they sold to Google. They seem to have had some really good talent there and I fear it is going to be wasted at Google.
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 is still a great value.
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.
Garmin sells a wide range of fitness trackers, only some of which are targeted to hardcore athletes. They have other models for casual users or those who care more about style.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191008005671/en/Pip...
It's ironic that you're totally inverted here. Most of the iPhone owners I know were given one by their company. It's the corporate standard so businesses which deal in phones hand them out.
I've actually never met someone with an Android device issued through their company. Literally 100% of the corporate phone users I know use iPhone!
Either your anecdote is the exact opposite of mine, or you're trying to create a narrative here that isn't really true.
P.S. Apple hasn't broken 50% marketshare in many years. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
If you count browser stats, https://www.statista.com/statistics/272664/market-share-held..., then Apple barely cracks 50% in the US.
Based on your 'cavalier' understanding of the statistics I have to assume your storytelling here is as grounded in reality as your data!
Your own numbers show that apple is the leader of the market by far. However I agree that they don't own the whole sector
They don't have to? Most people who pay for an iPhone already have bought into the ecosystem and are willing to pay a lot for Apple items (ear pods). Those people also would likely be more willing to buy wearables, so it's quite likely that they have a large stake in the wearable market (as your data shows). Most people who buy phones don't have the resources to buy accessories (like a wearable).
Even what you linked was 40% Apple, that's a huge market share for wearables (which is what you see in public). Not the majority, but probably enough that a person can say "it's all all see in the real world". Especially, if you are from a more affluent area, where locally it may be the majority.
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.
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
Their support was great but when it doesn't perform the basic function of syncing with my phone or desktop app, what good is it? I had software and hardware problems (band breaks easily) on all of them.
"fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me"
You can actually fix the display-glitching yourself by adding a paper/cardboard shim. It actually works! There's an excellent post[0] that outlines the process. I had to redo mine because it wasn't quite thick enough, but after I did that mine was good to go for a long time. I think you might have to redo it when the shim gets worn down and doesn't put enough pressure on the display connector? Not sure...
[0] https://waynedgrant.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/pebble-watch-sc...
They did have great potential but apparently consumers didn't agree. And then they sold their IP to Fitbit. :(
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.
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.
Don't discount this feature on a fitness tracker. The most recent Apple Watches are better in this respect compared to the first one, but the battery life is still measured in hours, rather than days.
The UX for a Fitbit as a smartwatch is honestly horrible. The Pebble acquihire prioritized watch apps, in (what I see as) a belief that watch apps are necessary to compete with Apple. Resources would be far better spend improving the first-party UX and apps first, before opening up the ecosystem to outside developers. The iPhone dev kit trailed far behind the initial iPhone launch.
The same could have been (rightfully) said about the Apple Watch....
The iPhone dev kit trailed far behind the initial iPhone launch.
The iPhone launched July 2007. The dev kit was released in April 2008. The App store launched around July 2008
Charge at night is a habit that can easily be adjusted to our daily schedule. btw Apple watch does last a full day (I meant 16+ hrs) with decent use, unless you are playing music out of it all the time or obsessively checking time/calendar.
Only advantage of fitbit is that some models are easier to wear to sleep, particularly if you don't need to charge at night. However, even here, apple one is way ahead - the theater mode will make sure the super bright led at the bottom won't wake you up.
It also looks like an actual adults watch too.
I have no idea about the UI that some people complain about, but my wife seems to have managed to get access quite a bit of functionality in her Fitbit, so I'd say it's good enough for its purpose.
I guess apple pay on a watch is marginally more convenient than taking out your phone, but $400 and having to charge it seems not really worth it?
A fact that blew my son's mind when I explained why he didn't have to charge his watch.
That is why I was asking. The only "benefit/luxury" you mention is apple pay and you say that you are not using it much.
I went on a 2 week trip to Europe and didnt even bring my charger -- lasted the whole time. I've had it for a year now and it's rock solid. It's been in the ocean with me, and been smashed into rocks on backpacking trips. Still in great shape.
I don't endorse many things very heavily but this thing is amazing. It's not sexy with it's black and white screen and small selection of watch faces... But it's so nice never needing to charge it, it's basically indestructible, and does everything you'd want a smart watch to do
It's enough to go from ~60% to ~80% and fits in as a daily habit, so my watch is almost always between 65% and 80%, It can track my sleep (I exclusively use my watch for tracking sleep, tracking exercise, tracking heartrate and telling the time. I don't have notifications enabled)
Then perhaps the best feature of charging the watch in this way, is that if you forget to charge (or unexpectedly away from home), the watch will always last for 3 extra days.
And if you are going away on short weekend trips, you don't need to pack your charger, just make sure it's at 100% before you leave for a reliable 4 days of usage.
Battery life kept me. Being able to go 4-7 days without thinking about the watch is paramount. I also don’t want to charge every night because I want to track my sleep! So Fitbit won out.
I wish they could succeed independently. They have so much love and stickiness in my friend group and we all love the simplicity of simply an advanced fitness tracker without all the weight of a full-fledged phone on your wrist. Sadly, it seems like they don’t know how to run a company effectively. Which is a shame because I really really don’t want to move to Apple or Google products or anything else in this category until they solve battery life.
Fact of the matter is that my Series 4 watch has about 2 and a half to three days of battery life, rather than the marketed 16 hours, especially when used like a fitbit (Apple's estimate bundles in music streaming, navigation, and hardcore workouts, and is tested on the smaller model, which has a smaller battery.)
I was a huge pebble fan, I still use my Pebble 2 and Time Round sometimes, the Apple watch is in another league as per what it can do, but I honestly think the Pebbles were still a better product than Fitbit's watch at doing what fitbit is trying to do. Sure the Fitbit has a nicer screen, but what do they do with it?
The configuration part of the fitbit companion app is frustrating. But that's where the UI belongs and where it should be fixed. I have zero interest in a watch that's an even smaller and more frustrating phone UI.
Mostly I like only having to charge my watch every 3-4 days because it's long enough to forget about needing to charge it.
I had a Pebble since their first kickstarter and the work Pebble did to make exactly what you are talking about blew Fitbit's current product out of the water (Even though Fitbit bought them and used their tech to make the Ionic and Versa). The Pebbles were faster, lighter, smaller, with better battery life (2+ weeks!) and a fantastic UX (By the same people who worked at Palm on WebOS). Sure they didn't have a touch screen, but they also intentionally had enough buttons to not need one. (Meaning they worked better with gloves)
Then you talk software quality, after using the Versa for a little while, the biggest problem is that its UI is such a mess to use. If you don't want to configure a watch face on the Watch, the Apple watch has that feature too and it is instant and easy to use, just like the Pebble was. Once you use everything else it's really clear that the smart features on the Versa are an afterthought that Fitbit tasked some scrum team to get done and shoved in the app in a week, marked the task as done, and moved on, forgetting that for the casual user, that is the only other thing you want to do with the app.
The other entire problem is that the Apple Watch is complex...but only as complex as you want it to be. If you never click the home button it can do everything you do with your watch with a nicer (bigger) screen, an easier, and a faster UI, and plus it has Siri and much better notification access. Fitbit is stuck between Apple and Garmin and they justy can't pick one. I imagine the Google sale would fix that pretty fast.
Every Fitbit I've had has felt disposable, and I've been using their products since 2013.
Other than having to restart it once or twice to fix the display not working, I haven't had any issues with it.
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.
And Naspers investing into Tencent and Softbank into Alibaba are up there too, though they’re just big minority stake investments.
I vote for NeXT
Your point definitely stands, as a ~3bn market opportunity might not be at the scale of Instagram or Alibaba, but thats some good ROI
Funny enough, I have an Aria scale because that's a meaningful metric for me to track long-term.
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...
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.
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.)
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! :)
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 can make a Pebble app that feels complete without doing any real design work. Because there's not much design that can be done.
I'd be really excited to see something similar in a more traditional watch form factor.
That was the magic of Pebble: fitting an honest-to-god smartwatch on the hardware of a fitness tracker.
I actually think google would benefit from differentiating their consumer tech from their search/adwords products.
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.
This is one of those things where limiting the functionality of the device enhances the usability of it. I can easily do the 3 or 4 things I actually want a watch to do on my fitbit(stopwatch, heartrate, pedometer, see who's calling) and don't have to worry about dumb stuff like receiving phone calls or watching video on a tiny screen.
It eventually irritated my skin (I had burn marks right under the light) so I had to give it up. Even with regular cleaning, I could not stop the strap itching.
The nice thing about Garmin (the company) is that they gave me a full refund even though it was well past the 30-day return. I haven't gone back to do the research on avoiding the skin issues, but I hope some day I'll be able to buy a Garmin again.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how well any of them keep time without syncing to their app.
You might be surprised: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/23/study-shows-fitbit-trackers-...
I check my pulse against a stopwatch during the same minute that Chinese no-name is counting my pulse, and the result is the same.
There's your answer right there. If people keep buying then why would they charge less?
My solution for the past year has been to leave the device unsynced. Strangely, it still somehow manages to upload data occasionally and I have no idea how it's doing it. about once a month it just gets stuck and I need to restart the thing. I'm going to guess those two things are somehow related but I don't know quite how.
I was planning on switching to a cheap Chinese device anyway. This is the kick in my keister that will get me to do it.
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.
Other reasons for wanting spotify is a remote control. When I had my pebble and my phone was in my pocket I'd often use it to skip songs, drop the volume a bit, etc without having to pull out my phone each time
I don't want to carry around a phone during prolonged vigorous exercise.
Spotify integration makes a lot of sense for fitness watches.
Ok, but listening to music is cheating.
When I'm working out or doing yardwork, it's handy to have access to these things on my wristwatch rather than trying to fiddle with the phone in my pocket. It's sounds like the most minor convenience, but I use it all the time. If that were to be limited to only a tiny number of apps (and not the Android bluetooth thing, which picks up whatever happens to be playing; usually VLC in my case, sometimes Spotify) it would be a lot less useful.
I could push those buttons through my coat sleeve while wearing gloves.
- Hit the back button a couple times to make sure I'm back on the watchface/home screen
- Hold down a button to shortcut into an app (e.g. music controls, music boss)
- Play/pause, control volume, go forwards/backwards (or 30sec skip in some podcast apps).
Hoping I can continue to use the device. Have any competitors come close in matching pebble's button UX?
I like my Apple Watch too, but I miss the hardware buttons and being able to do stuff without looking at it.
Apple's take is that I should talk to Siri instead of using buttons, but the 8 year wait for them to support 3rd party audio apps kept me from building any habits with that. I'll probably get used to it.
I don't want a watch that i have to charge daily, or i'll take it off and end up never putting it back on. I've been thinking of buying up some refurbished old pebbles as they have the exact features I want without the downsides of ALL of the newer watches/fitbands.
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.
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)
My Fitbit Ionic stopped working 6 months into the 12 month warranty and they flaked on the warranty anyway.
Many Ionics were secretly sold without the manufacturer's warranty.
The problem turned out to be a shorted capacitor. My secretly-warranty-less ionic was sold during the Great Capacitor Shortage. Coincidence? Maybe. I doubt we'll ever know.
Fitbit said they "had" to refuse my warranty on account of having purchased the watch from an "unauthorized re-seller" because of clones, but their software already checks serial numbers for duplicates and rejects clones, so that sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally, my next watch was a Garmin, and while I tried to buy it from the official Garmin store on Amazon I found a 3rd party store on the receipt, so I contacted Garmin and ask them if this would invalidate my warranty. They said it would not. They made good on that promise two weeks ago when a fatigue crack showed up in the plastic frame.
tl;dr Fuck Fitbit, Go Garmin!
Do you make videos/streams of your work? Would love to watch.
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.
That's not a great business model. They should have devices that either scale with you, or different models with feature-sets that target different ranges of users.
The people that are active and stick with fitness tracking are exactly the ones that are most likely to purchase new devices over time - either as replacements or upgrades. Instead, they switch to Garmin or some other more "serious" fitness tracker. That's a crying shame for Fitbit... the original fitness tracker.
Supporting chest-straps, or selling their own chest-strap, doesn't mean a casual users needs to buy one. But it does mean a growing serious fitness enthusiast can continue to use Fitbit, buying new devices over time.
From my experience, Fitbit still has the most polished App. It's a darn shame you can't get more out of Fitbit devices though.
See the spO2 sensor on the Charge 3 that has been inaccessible since the device launched.
Source: Spouse, who worked on a field spO2 monitor at her first job and has since spent the next decade in the medical device regulatory industry.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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)
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!
Fitbit: the grim reaper of wearables.
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 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.
If we eliminate homicides in the world, our morals wont change about killing another person. Eliminating the problem or how long it’s been a problem has nothing to do with morality.
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...
If Fitbit just stored your personal fitbit data in a data lake in the cloud, that's not covered by HIPAA. But if it then shared that data with a service that made suggestions about your health, now it's covered by HIPAA. But if Fitbit allowed your smartphone to download your data, and gave you an app that allowed you personally to see health-related information about that data, that is (afaik) not covered by HIPAA, because you and your phone alone are not a Covered Entity or Business Associate.
Fitbit has a "health solutions" department which seems dedicated to healthcare solutions based on Fitbit data: https://healthsolutions.fitbit.com/ My guess is anything HIPAA-related is solely done through that arm of the company. Example: https://healthsolutions.fitbit.com/healthsystems/ I take this as them saying, "Hey Covered Entities, sign a Business Associate contract with us, and you can hoover up Fitbit data directly from us". By writing some glue code and doing the HIPAA hokey-pokey, they make a tidy profit.
Regulations are often implemented as a set of specific hard rules based on specific values (so it's easy to rule about them). The systems they regulate are almost always never so clear, and are based on competing gradients. Where these rules interact with natural systems (such as a free market) are often some of the most lucrative places for companies to develop new strategies.
Where some people see rules that prevent or kill existing businesses, other people see an opportunity for a new type of business. The whole financial sector is rife with companies that do just this. A simple example of how it could happen in this case is that there may be some non HIPAA covered data (that people may or may not think of as health data at this point in time) mixed in with the HIPAA data, and very carefully harvesting and monetizing that could be lucrative. Maybe later laws are updated to change this, or maybe it becomes the new normal.
What they currently do with the fitness data they collect is probably a pretty good guidepost for what they'll continue to do with fitness data they collect.
And this is why you have to carefully read privacy policies. Pebble had a clause in theirs saying they could sell any personal data about you to anyone, either as part of a company acquisition or for any other reason. Pebble got bought out by Fitbit. If that data is part of Fitbit's sale then Google will now have all data Pebble ever collected on anyone (which was, at least potentially, a lot).
Now, that is for data that has no special legal protections. Whereas medical data is, for good reasons, subject to pretty heavy handed laws. Differing quite dramatically across all the diverse jurisdictions Google runs in. Sure, I have no clue what my employer's grand plan is here, but it will surprise me very strongly if medical data starts finding its way to established products. And note this is "medical data" according to the conservative common denominator across all the jurisdictions Google has to care about.
It's just as likely they want to use fitbit brand to set the bar for android wearable portfolio, like they do with the Pixel for phones, than harvesting your daily steps for targeted advertising.
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?
and
data and location from fitbit owners < what they can already get from the andriod phone.
I get the point you are making, I am not denying there is value, but it is a stretch that it is all about data.
In fact, I have heard about companies who had ties with Fitbit to sell location data to third parties. I would much rather have Google be that arbitrator.
I don't work for Google or Fitbit.
The whole strategy behind the Pixel phone was to change the perception of the android brand as a cheap, bloatware'd device for tech dudes. Releasing a recognizable, high quality wearable line fits in with that strategy.
The hard part for Google is delivering on end-to-end encryption for messages that don't leave their messaging system (similar to Apple's blue bubbles). They really, really want to see what people are saying to each other.
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.
Unless you were suggesting in your comment that Apple should release the AW from the walled garden and allow it to work on Android? In that case, I agree!
Basically. Sure, I'm generally biased towards Apple products, but it just seems like wasted effort they all develop their own phone, smart speaker, virtual assistant, watch, etc. I don't feel like its doing the traditional "competition making everyone better." Instead it feels more like a checklist of portfolio items.
I do see the value in integrating with your own stuff, but I just don't see these product categories improving that much. When any big company buys one of these smaller companies I feel like the wish is that they stay the same and ignore them. I can't really think of any of these cases where I've been happier at the result.
The best bet is probably something like Withings. It was acquired by Nokia in 2016 and sold back to the founder in 2018. My pre-2016 scale still works and connects great. Sure, we might not have these companies at all if they weren't acquired, but they also wouldn't have been built up the same way if their goal wasn't a big buyout.
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?
Google wants the brand.
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.
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.
They're obviously buying it just to harvest the biometric data to build a more accurate synthetic human, which can then click on ads to generate more revenue.
!RemindMe: 2 years
But IOT device lifespan is way too short to be installed into a wall, even something as easy to DIY as a lightswitch.
No personal experience but I know people who have some and I haven't heard complaints.
I would actually recommend a more open standard today, such as Z-Wave or ZigBee, but the point is, plenty of IoT hardware is long-lived, it just isn't as trendy as what's marketed by Amazon or Google.
My friends and I had been using Garmin cycle computers and watches for a while, but lately we've been moving to Suunto and Wahoo devices - entirely due to software bugs.
My Fenix 5 watch freezes up 2 or 3 times a month. The screen will be frozen at a particular time for 5-10 minutes and it won't respond to any button presses, not even to turn it off. And they don't sync to the app without an internet connection. And the cycle computers freeze up on boot trying to download upgrades, even when you're in the midle of nowhere and haven't had an internet connection in days. Lots and lots of little annoyance bugs like those.
Definitely not designed for offline use, in any case.
And by "timely advice," we mean notifications that you need to shop for new insurance, because they've detected that you have become a riskier bet and are dropping your coverage.
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?
When is the U.S. going to get proper user data protections?
Sleep tracking is another area in which fitbit is one of the best, if not the best among peers.
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.
Anyhow, I was actually hoping Microsoft would buy them, and make an assistant agnostic device that could run Google, Alexa or Cortana.
I'm guessing they've learned their lesson after buying nokia...
They are buying (a lot of) data and a list of customers. They don’t care about the app code.
"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.
I think OP is referencing that Google itself is the lack of improvement. Who cares how the company is doing if buying its products are out of the question due to privacy concerns.
I’m in the majority here who would never use or buy a product attached to Google.
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.
The location of the data does not matter.
The origin of the data does not matter.
Citizenship does not matter.
These are the reasons many US firms tried to call GDPR overreaching. However if it didn't apply in this way there would be too much wiggle room to be effective.
"The Guidelines note that the processing of personal data of EU citizens that takes place outside the EU will not trigger the GDPR so long as the processing is not a specific offer directed at individuals in the EU or to monitor their behavior in the EU."
So it may be safe for google...but given it would apply to a user profile in general, including EU, maybe not?
Even if you do not live in California your request will likely be honored but of course I have no specifics about Fitbit.
that's like not having a bank account/credit card in the modern day. Doable, but extremely inconvenient and difficult to remain so.
You are the product and almost every organization you interact with is trying to get a piece of the action. Some of the worst offenders selling you out are your state and local governments.
This is health data we're talking about
It's the only wearable brand other than Apple Watch that has any traction whatsoever with consumers.
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.
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.
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.
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...
That's honestly my first thought reading this. I lost my faith in Google about these sort of things.
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.
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.
So even if Google tracks you all day, they mostly have coarse data.
Fitbits main purpose is workout tracking, so they have a lot of precise GPS tracks. I suppose those have some value for Google.
However, Google doesn't need your precise location 24/7. Polling GPS once every 5-10 minutes is more than enough to advertise things in your area or know every place you go throughout your day.
A lot of people use Fitbits for workout tracking, so they must have a lot of GPS tracks that could be useful for mapping areas that are currently not so detailed on Google Maps (eg. many hiking trails are missing on Google Maps in my area)
> 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
There's presumably some caching on your phone, but the server is the source of truth, and I don't think you can get updated info on your phone without it round-tripping to their server first.
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.
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.
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.
For working out, absolutely, if you’re trying to target a specific cardio exercise you want to your heart rate to be in a range and I have used it for that too, though usually a chest sensor which is much more accurate.
I also like sleep tracking, because I don't get enough sleep, and my Fitbit helps keep track of my failure.
That being said, I bought my Fitbit as a smartwatch, not a health tracker. It was the only smartwatch that supported Windows Mobile.
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 worry that these tools perform a sort of psychological trick on people that resembles a "denial of service attack", fooling them into thinking they are using their time wisely by just walking around more, even if the benefits are negligible & leading them to avoid exploring other options.
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 can only speak for myself but for me the gamification of fitness is not in necessarily doing extra things randomly throughout the day just to hit the desired number.
I wore Fitbits for years (before switching to an Apple Watch) to be able to quantify my activity levels on a daily basis. In doing that, I can see trends over time and adjust. I feel that it was very informative to see how my average resting heart rates decreased as I focused on being healthier. I was also able to get a better average of my activity levels and correlate that with how I feel and the average of my weight measurement over time. All of those measurements together is where I see the usefulness.
it's a nice way of tracking your fitness level coz that stuff goes by the wayside in your prime working age 20-50.
if you're a fitness enthusiast then yeah you're definitely monitoring heart rates already with a more expensive watch(more accurate Fitbit matches vs semi accurate Apple)
the value prop exists, people just don't know that much about fitness - there's a reason for the obesity crisis. insurance companies need to start tying rates to medically measured and vetted BMIs
OK, out of all the responses to my question on here, this is actually the only one that sounds like a decent argument to me.
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.
Having another family member to pull you out for a walk has been beneficial.
After some time, we have raised the goal to 10000. Now keeping 13k monthly average is not unusual now
I have a feeling that most people use these bands primarily for notifications and I started the same way but then it helped me to become more active.
And you don’t stare at it while working out. You might look at it to see if you’re above or below your target HR if you’re doing long distance running or if you’re doing HIIT. If you’re just trying to get your ass into the gym then yes it’s not that important but if you want to improve your time then it’s great.
I do admit it did give me “sleep anxiety” if my time to fall asleep was a bit longer than usual. The other con was it was a bit bulky so my sleeves would get caught often.
The heart rate monitoring has been incredibly useful for me. Over the last year, I've had 2-3 instances where my heart rate got rather high while sedentary. Those moments were times when I was having panic attacks. I could feel my heart racing, my thoughts were spiraling, and I knew something was wrong. When this happens, the Apple Watch notified me that my heart rate was irregular. I consulted my primary doctor about this, showed him the graphs and explained the stressful situations, and he helped get me in contact with someone who could better help me to deal with this.
I know it's a minor thing, but it made a big difference and got me talking with the right kinds of medical professionals for an issue I was seemingly avoiding. Yea, it took almost 4 years of wearing this device, but it's made a difference.
My favourite things have been seeing on the daily heart rate graph the moment my favourite band at a festival came on, and the time I had a horrific nightmare.
I also noticed that excercises that I thought were pushing my heart rate to its peak ~180 (i.e. my upwards slog of a bike ride home, or going to the climbing gym) were actually moderately intensive, topping out at like ~130 (although, the absolute accuracy of the cheap HR sensors is questionable: but they're fairly good at detecting relative change). It encouraged me to do more cardio-intensive running mostly just to make the numbers go up.
Also the sleep tracking (again, might not be the most accurate) yields some interesting data. And being able to see the effects of consuming various substances on HR.....
Some of us just geek out over Quantified Self :-)
Also of note: I always felt that the Fitbits are too much of a "walled garden"; the devices' bluetooth communications are locked down and encrypted so only the official app can do anything useful with them. After I went through three broken/lost fitbits I switched to Xiaomi mi bands and the fact that they've had their communications protocol reverse engineered and a really powerful third-party phone app "Notify & Fitness" is great for me as I can play around with the (live!) data coming off the band, without the condition that it touches anyone elses' servers first.
I've also used the band to sync an LED pixel array tshirt I made to my heart rate
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'm not saying you need a FitBit for this, but if it enables this kind motivation in a convenient way, that could be well worth it.
But I figured it also tracks how many hours I sleep, and I've been using it to try to improve those values. Seeing bad (or good) numbers does affect your motivation to reach the goal.