A report with Reuters suggests that Fitbit is up for sale. The company has hired an investment bank to explore options. One option is to sell out to Alphabet (Google).
Fitbit has recently been making some good corporate partnerships to ship its devices and services but I suspect is finding selling its watches to the general public increasingly more difficult.
The FITBIT platform has always been pretty good. It’s just that the latest devices are not that much better than much cheaper ‘Chinese’ devices at the lower end of the market. With the falling retail price of old-model Apple Watches in the mid-market and the premium/’luxury’ watches, like Garmin, at the upper price brackets, Fitbit has nowhere to go.
Well, it has somewhere to go … it’s just moving there at a snail’s pace. That’s simply not good enough, as I have alluded to before here on several occasions.
I suspect that they know the game is up, although it’s been fairly obvious since the launch of the Fitbit Ionic. Somebody could buy their platform, somebody could buy some of their patents and employees.
Fitbit shares rose on the news.
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What happens to people who already have fitbits, will we still get our step count etc.
Nothing has changed (yet).
Maybe Fitbit keeps going as they are now for a few more years.
I understand their predicament but I hope they don’t sell out. Fitbits platform and ease of use makes it fun to teamup withfriends. Selling out will mean we have to buy new watches because ours won’t work on their new platform. I think I’m going to cry.
*IF* they sell out I would imagine that the platform would be supported for several years.
…not if Google buys it: https://gcemetery.co/
😀
wow, that’s a full cemetary.
google are tinkering with the Pixel watch still. I can’t really see the fitbit products augmenting that. hence my comments that they might buy the patents/prople etc. perhaps a similar motive was behind those acquisitions in your link?
I love Fitbit I really would like it to stay.?
I think it’s a matter of production scale. Polar, Suunto, may suffer too… As the big ones get closer in sports functions, it will be tougher to maintain themselves in the game. It seems it will be a matter of time to watch acquisitions in this area and maybe the giants would offer sports versions and watches alongside with the “normal versions”…