Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from competitor Jawbone

Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by passive on Friday June 15, 2018 @06:32AM (#17318731)

This is bizarre to me.

Xiaomi has been making fitness trackers that are dramatically better than Fitbit's low-end for years:

  - 1/4-1/3 the price
  - 4x+ battery life
  - waterproof
  - more reliable, at least for me (my Flex required 2 replacements in 6 months)

I've been amazed that Fitbit has been able to succeed despite this. I assume people really like the social aspects of the software, which Xiaomi doesn't really do.

If Fitbit had to steal secrets to produce such an inferior product, how the heck did Xiaomi do this? Did they kidnap people from Jawbone (or someone else) and enslave them?

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by noelwelsh on Friday June 15, 2018 @07:09AM (#17318899)

I guess comparatively few people know of Xiaomi's fitness trackers. I didn't until reading this comment.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by emodendroket on Friday June 15, 2018 @04:34PM (#17323323)

There's also a lot of fear of Chinese-made devices.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by mieseratte on Friday June 15, 2018 @07:12AM (#17318906)

> If Fitbit had to steal secrets to produce such an inferior product, how the heck did Xiaomi do this? Did they kidnap people from Jawbone (or someone else) and enslave them?

I am similarly curious as to any technical reasons why this would have been considered "necessary".

Possibly someone felt a development death march? Of course, it's entirely possible that Fitbit didn't need to, that this was a matter of lack of morals and some odd combination of laziness, stupidity, and hubris.

The corporate version of a guy who shoplifts a $5 widget but has a wad of cash in his pocket. Sometimes criminals are just stupid.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by baybal2 on Friday June 15, 2018 @08:28AM (#17319235)

>I've been amazed that Fitbit has been able to succeed despite this. I assume people really like the social aspects of the software, which Xiaomi doesn't really do.

Because it is a Chinese company, and thus, it is "uncool"

I think this is another exemplary case of Chinese company with a superior product being greatly weighted down by its "Chineseness" in Western markets.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by WillPostForFood on Friday June 15, 2018 @09:24AM (#17319561)

I have a Mi Band, it is great and has amazing battery life (30+ days). The main reason they are rare in the US is that they are neither marketed or sold here by Xiaomi. You have to get them via third party importers.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by reaperducer on Friday June 15, 2018 @11:28AM (#17320418)

>Because it is a Chinese company, and thus, it is "uncool"

More like Xiaomi is a weird word to Western ears and eyes, while FitBit is intuitive to pronounce and its rhyming is pleasant to the ears.

Marketing 101: Pick a name for your product that's easy for your customers.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by baybal2 on Friday June 15, 2018 @11:36AM (#17320516)

I think there is no shortage of Chinese brand dishing out sums in millions of USDs to all kinds of top tier marketing consultancies just to discover that "uncoolness" stigma keeps chasing them through rebrandings, regardless of how much star CMOs they hire.

As for Xiaomi, they are quite frequent on pages of trendy journals there and there with sponsored articles, yet if you ask an average reader if they even noticed it, most will say no.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by reaperducer on Friday June 15, 2018 @12:21PM (#17320974)

They just have to come up with a better brand. Outside of China, "Xiaomi" is not an easy word.

There are innumerable examples of Japanese companies that changed their names to make them easier to market. Panasonic, for example.

More recently out of Korea, look at the rebranding of Lucky Goldstar as simply "LG." Worked wonders.

There are plenty of Chinese brands that are successful in the West. But they are always brands that are appealing to the Western ear. Vizio. Element. TCL. All better names than "Xiaomi."

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by emodendroket on Friday June 15, 2018 @04:35PM (#17323327)

I suppose that's why nobody buys Samsung phones, Haier refrigerators, Mitsubishi automobiles, etc.

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Re:Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from... by cat199 on Friday June 15, 2018 @10:17AM (#17319916)

> I think this is another exemplary case of Chinese company with a superior product being greatly weighted down by its "Chineseness" in Western markets.

Or this comment is an example of blaming bad marketing on racism..

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