I think you're spot on here. They had a perfectly viable 20-30 person company going in a nice stable little niche, and then the smartwatch hype cycle reached its peak and VCs threw a ton of cash at them along with a mandate to become the Next Big Thing. And so they hired way too many new people, churned out too many new models, and collapsed when the market just wasn't there.
Venture capital might be the only way to fund a moonshot-style startup but it seems to be the kiss of death for already-established, already-profitable businesses.
Smartwatches are not "moonshots". They shouldn't be treated as such. They could be a component of one, though, and society would benefit from components being economically stable, instead of imploding after few years. Pebble was arguably the sanest smartwatch design out there - long battery life, power-efficient screens, hackable[0]. Because they suddenly wanted to get too big too fast, the world today does not have any smartwatch of comparable quality and utility.
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[0] - not just in terms of writing watch faces; people did try to use them as medical devices[1], and they even had a protocol for attaching custom hardware that didn't go anywhere, but probably would if the company was still around
The thing that blows me away is no one has really swooped in to replace it. I got a Pebble because I wanted an always-on screen with high battery life (I charge mine roughly once every 5 days), and I have no idea where I'm going to find one when the time comes.
If I'm able to eke out another 2-3 years, I might get an Apple Watch, which would presumably have 3-4 day battery life by then.
Nothing has gotten to the size of my my pebble time round though
The only thing I wish it had was an alarm that would wake me up at a specific level of sleep, like rem sleep.
The OS on it is quite nice, the iOS app isn't bad either, but the inaccuracy just drove me nuts.
I moved on to a Garmin vivosmart instead. Not quite as pretty, but a lot more accurate.
For my purposes, it is a productivity boost to have calendar, slack etc. notifications and be able to mute everything by holding a button.
Today there is a myriad of competitors; when pebble.com went down, I bought one with 45 day battery life and otherwise the same features as a Pebble HR+ at the same price, plus GPS. There's third party apps for a few bucks.
I do miss the always-on display and its clarity, but not dealing with the slow and buggy software and lack of sync or ability to export the data. And I have more confidence in Xiaomi being around in a few years, not that it matters with Google Fit, MyFitnessPal and local CSV backups.
Hasn't the Apple Watch been outselling Rolex etc.?
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-outsold-the-entire-swi...
Nobody can tell you how many Rolexes there are in total, let alone the sales figures of a specific model of a Rolex. That's partially what makes them so valuable. People usually don't change Rolexes every year when the new model is out.
It's incredible how normal it has become to switch out $500-$1200 products at such a cycle. Wasteful, next to no functional gain (certified electro-cardiography being exempt in my books), supporting narcissism...
It's consumerism to the max. We should all take a step back and think about what we are doing.
But in the case of the Apple Watch, I think this replacement cycle is the same as most jewelry/fashion items.
The only people I see wearing watches are business people who wear suits to work or work outdoors (people in the military). That's only a small percentage of people with a ~$100 product.
I'd actually bet that phones will be supplanted by a combination of smartwatch + smartglasses in the future.
If you have ever detachedly watched a crowd of people holding out these slabs in their hands and craning their necks over them, you might agree that it looks rather archaic and is begging to be put out of fashion.
The cultural impact is undoubtedly lower.
If they sold additional services that weren't necessary for the watch to perfom, then maybe they'd have survived without depending on Kickstarter for funding.
I'm sad they're gone. There is nothing quite like it on the market.
I'm still looking for a smartwatch that hits all the beats of Pebble.
Why?
I realised a couple of things once I lost it:
1. very few notifications need my urgent attention. In fact, I frequently have my notifications turned to "calls only" on my phone, and frequently leave it in another room on purpose so I don't have the temptation to look at it. A smartwatch would be thus a negative aspect of my life in this regard.
2. I don't need to track every aspect of my life, in fact that just generated more anxiety for me. I'm pretty fit, sleep soundly not enough (but tracking that never helped), eat very healthily, etc.. Tracking didn't help, it just added to the mental noise / anxiety (disclaimer: I don't suffer strongly from anxiety).
3. While I loved the PTR form-factor, I can't stand bulky watches (and really dislike cuboid watches). There just isn't a smartwatch with an aesthetic I'd consider wearing.
I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable. They could have remained a small house which maintained a great product for a segment of the market that really appreciated it. I'm sure that's a simplistic view, and definitely ill-informed since I wasn't on the inside.
I still think they are far better than the Apple Watch or any of the Android Wear devices I've seen.