I too thought Fitbit was screwed when Apple announced its watch, but after seeing the prices and Apple's eye towards high-end consumers in this market, I wouldn't underestimate Fitbit as a business.
I have a surge that I was given. I also have some high end training devices I use on the bike, Polar, Suunto and Garmin. Fitbit doesn't compete with these, neither does apple watch (at least not yet.) The fitbit is easy to use, I do find myself looking at the numbers on and off during the day, maybe walking a bit more. I'm curious about the aria integration, that seems like another killer piece of the weight loss and basic fitness equation.
The geek in me would love to be able to pull my fitbit data in to Rubitrack or something else, at the same time, it's really not that kind of data. It seems like it adds data to all the places where I didn't keep it before, for good or bad. Not sure how that helps me out exactly (I put a couple hundred miles on a bike every week) but if you're trying to lose weight or just get started with some basic fitness, I could easily see it being really valuable. They have a social integration component, I might be too old or a different kind of bird but a badge for climbing flights of stairs doesn't do it for me like a top 10 in a bike race, the younger set seem to enjoy that stuff.
Seems like a really immature industry as a whole. And FWIW, Apple builds killer laptops but Dell and the others still make them too. Apple builds a great phone but there are still dozens of competitors in the market and some of them are very compelling. Apple Watch seems like a market maker more than a market killer. It is proof that the wrist watch is interesting again, I don't think they're going to put all the other watch makers out of business any time soon.
I don't know. We have a weight problem as a country, anything that helps people get out and move more and gives them some motivation and keeps them honest about it seems good to me. I wish them good luck.
Every company's trackers have some defect, though. Garmin's software totally sucks and it can't do HR tracking in the water. Suunto can do that but it's platform syncs with almost nothing. Polar, until recently, refused to use Ant+. Nike+ had a low barrier to entry, but then they figured out it would be impossible to compete with Suunto, Polar & Garmin so they pivoted to become just a platform. I read DC Rainmaker with avid interest, but as with things like cycling power meters there is way too much fragmentation in the activity monitor segment.
There's a market for fitness devices, sure, but the ceiling on it is now $349 (and likely dropping). Fitbit et al. won't capture high margins below that point long-term, and it's much more likely (IMO) they offer a commoditized hardware product with complimentary "insight" services (which is, itself, a perilous market). There isn't a lot of room for profit in such a market.
Just wait until developers have more time with Android Wear.
FitBit refusing to do this means my data isn't where I want it. It's within their app and I can't get it back.
And now I readily share my experience with friends and family who are usually quite surprised at how it holds your data hostage, and they're just as bothered as I am when I point out that the device is a one time purchase but the servers it reports back to require ongoing payments. All I have to do is point out that Fitbit has their health data, and that of millions of other people, and they have a need to make money.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that your data is not safe with them.
It also took Fitbit over a quarter to launch Strava integration after announcing it, yet that feature is probably a couple days (max) of coding. The Mods in the discussion forms kept sandbagging, claiming the feature was extremely complex.
The initial step counter was a hit product with a specific niche. My impression is they've really struggled to keep up with growth and innovation in the field, and this IPO is very much an attempt at an exit of sorts.
I had to return my first fitbit scale because my firewall blocked the first outbound request that the scale made (it was a new unidentified device on the network), which caused the scale to brick itself.
If the first registration request fails it does not appear to retry. Taking out the batteries had no effect.
I was stunned they hadn't caught this in product testing. Not that the first request could get blocked by an anal firewall but that a sporadic internet connection doesn't cause the device to brick.
With that said, I've become less happy with their hardware over time. My One frequently resets its clock and thus miscounts steps; my Aria downgrades my network to 802.11b (but that might be fixed by getting a better router?).
Edit: to clarify when you go to fitbit's website and you go to the device's settings it shows you all of the measurements and lets you delete some. If it has been extracted to a fitbit account then it is "saved" (testing exporting my fitbit account it does have my old weights), but for example all of the measurements of our cat+me which did not have a fitbit account were auto deleted after some time period. I wonder if you don't log into your fitbit account in less than 90 days if you would also start losing your weight history or something similar :\ Either way deleting weight data on a product whos sole purpose is keeping track of data for you is sad.
edit: Clearer: Apps that work with other watch platforms are now in conflict with Apple's policy of not mentioning a competing platform, because now Apple has a watch platform. It makes sense from an Android-iOS sense, because the systems aren't compatible, so no real need to mention it. But if the entire purpose of your app is to connect an iPhone to a watch, your option is the App Store.
What will the developers put in the description? "This is an app that connects your iPhone to...well, Apple won't let us tell you! Check out our website to learn more about our app."
Apple should update their policies and implementation of such to specify this as "mobile phone platforms".