Pebble Smartwatch Returns, Nine Years After Inglorious End

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The Pebble smartwatch is not dead, it was just taking a very long nap.

Seventeen years after Eric Migicovsky and his team began working on the first iteration, and 13 years after it was launched, the Pebble is on its way back.

Pebble exploded after a 2012 Kickstarter campaign, where 68,000 people chipped in a total of US$10 million (A$16 million) to help bring the dream to life.

“Over the next few years, we sold 2 million watches and did over $230m in sales,” Migicovsky wrote in a new blog post. “We succeeded at inventing the smartwatch and an entirely new product category.”

It’s a big call to say Pebble was the first smartwatch, but it depends on who you ask and how you define the parameters.

At any rate, despite the success, the Pebble people “failed to create a sustainable, profitable business”, Migicovsky conceded.

Pebble watches 1 Pebble Smartwatch Returns, Nine Years After Inglorious End
Pebble watches.

“Sales for our version 2.0 (Pebble Time) in 2015 didn’t hit forecasts and the oversupply in inventory put us into a major cash crunch (targeted ~$100m in sales, we did $82m).

“Pebble Time did not succeed because in a quest for huge growth we attempted to expand beyond our initial geeky/hacker user base and failed to reposition it – first as a productivity device, then as a fitness watch.”

Migicovsky said that with the benefit of hindsight “this was stupid and obvious and 100% my fault”.

“We didn’t know if there was actually a market for a more ‘productivity’ smartwatch and we weren’t a fitness company at the core. The underlying problem was that we shifted from making something we knew people wanted, to making an ill-defined product that we hoped people wanted.”

Parts of the business were sold to Fitbit at the end of 2016.

Nine years on and Migicovsky hasn’t quite been able to cleanse the Pebble from his system. Plus, he sees nothing in the smart watch sector that rings his bells.

Pebble watch Pebble Smartwatch Returns, Nine Years After Inglorious End
Pebble watch message.

“You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012. I’ve tried every single smart watch out there, but none do it for me.”

He said no company is making a smartwatch with the core set of features he wants: always-on e-paper screen; long battery life; “simple and beautiful user experience around a core set of features I use regularly (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking”; buttons to play/pause/skip music without looking at the screen.

And … hackable. 

“Apparently you can’t even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch?” Migicovsky asked. “That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!”

He said that “over the years” the Pebble crew had considered making a new smart watch.

“Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago. There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient. 

Pebble watch on eBay Pebble Smartwatch Returns, Nine Years After Inglorious End
Back of face of Pebble Time watch on eBay.

“The challenge has always been, at its heart, software. It’s the beautifully designed, fun, quirky operating system (OS) that makes Pebble a Pebble.”

He said the PebbleOS was built over four years by dozens of engineers, plus employees in quality assurance and product: “Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.

Instead, we took a more direct route – I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes!”

The source code is now available at github.com/google/pebble.

Pebble watch on eBay 2 Pebble Smartwatch Returns, Nine Years After Inglorious End
Pebble watch on eBay.

Migicovsky said he had “really, really, really hoped that someone else would come along and build a Pebble replacement”. That hasn’t happened, so “a small team and I are diving back into the world of hardware to bring Pebble back”.

“This time round, we’re keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time. I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I don’t envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future.”

He said the new watch “basically has the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well”.

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