Fitbit Versa – Significant Sales, Significant App Growth.

Fitbit have just announced that they have shipped over 1 million of their Fitbit Versa (reviewed here) since April 16th.

Furthermore over 2.4million users of the Fitbit app have signed up for the female health tracking feature which calendarises and notifies for menstruation and fertility periods.

Fitbit also state that 18,000 developers have signed up and have so far delivered over 900 apps/clock faces.

Take out

Female health tracking is not novel, I’d suggest that more precise tools are available using more precise heart rate and temperature analyses. However the level of take-up demonstrated by Fitbit is both impressive and, presumably, beneficial for those that are taking advantage of the functionality.

The shipping of 1 million Versa is perhaps not necessarily as good as it sounds on face value. These stats are presumably ex-factory shipments and therefore do not reflect actual consumer sales. If the device fails to sell or gets returned in large numbers then that would cause problems down the line. However my word of caution on that point is probably misplaced. Amazon reviews of the Versa are generally very positive suggesting that those who buy it far outnumber those who are not happy.

Perhaps even mor important for Fitbit is the developers that have signed up. When the Fit Ionic (reviewed here) was released in 2017 the app store was somewhat bare. Had it stayed bare, the future for Fitbit would have been bleak. Let’s put the 900 apps/clock faces into perspective. Garmin’s Vivoactive 3 (VA3) has about 875 CIQ add-ons. The VA3 is a competitor of the Versa, yet Fitbit have done a great job and caught up within only a matter of months (I assume that Ionic apps and Versa apps are fully inter-compatible). The challenge now is to keep the growth going to chaallenge WearOS and Apple.

I wonder what the sales split is between upgraders and those new to Fitbit?

Source: fitbit.com

▷ Fitbit Versa Review – Looks like Apple Watch … but isn’t