Slashdot Mirror
Pebble Gets Acquired By Fitbit - Ends Production and Ceases Support Of Its Existing Lineup of Smartwatches (getpebble.com)
Reader phorm writes: In a notice to Kickstarter backers, pebble has stated that -- following the acquisition by Fitbit (official now) -- they will no longer promote, manufacture, or sell devices. Further, while existing functionality may continue, it is likely to be degraded and warranty support will no longer be provided. This includes any recently shipped Pebble models. For those that were eagerly awaiting shipment of Pebble Time 2 and other newer devices, those devices will not ship at all. Pebble has indicated refunds will be made within 4-8 weeks. Those expecting their money may not want to hold their breath, however, because a contradictory statement made by to backers by email says that refunds will be made via Kickstarter by March 2017.Fitbit said it is only purchasing software assets from Pebble.
It's not purchasing the company, just some engineers and software. The company is disappearing.
No, sounds like Fitbit is acquiring people not the actual company and it's assets.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Get bought out before dropping support. Laugh all the way to the bank.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I backed the original Pebble, then later the Pebble Time Steel. I had backed the Pebble Time 2, and I am HIGHLY disappointed with both Pebble and Fitbit for not honoring those pledges. Even with degraded support or updates, I would have loved to have what I paid for. And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying. The worst of it is there are users with BRAND NEW Pebble 2 devices, only days old, that now have no warranty and no support period. What's even worse is that there are no other comparable smart watches. I'm one of the few that love smart watches, despite the current trend and downfall of many of them, as I've owned them going back to Calculator Watches, then Fossil Abacus PalmOS 4.x watch, and many others. I tried a Android Wear watch but grew dissatisfied with it as the battery on both those and Apple watches in most cases do not even last a full day and are now *always on* display like ePaper watches are. I tried a Fitbit way back, as a health monitoring before they added step counters into Pebble. I hated it, and got it returned after the device stopped working a month or two later. This only solidifies my opinion of "Never again Fitbit"
Sounds like they are acquiring software assets and possible human resources but not the actual company.
According to TFA, Pebble is shutting down.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
You're sort of right. Apparently they're acquiring the IP and also hiring some of the employees that are now jobless. The shell company still technically exists and will go into bankruptcy and probably receivership shortly thereafter.
Who on their right mind is going to spend hundreds of dollars for some minor functionality?
Back in the 1980s, I remember thinking "If only there was a way to have my girlfriend (at the time) send me her pulse so I could feel her love on my own wrist in real-time. Of course the technology wasn't there, and wouldn't be for some time, so I had to settle for her bloody heart in a jar and 25 years in a psychiatric hospital.
Trolling is a art,
*I* wanted a Pebble Time 2. I backed one. There were almost 60 thousand of us!
*I* am currently wearing a Pebble Time and have been since it arrived.
My wife has a Charge HR and only keeps putting up with it because she's addicted to looking at her numbers at the end of the day and beating mine. She hates when she has trouble getting the screen to come on (About 30% of the time) and she hates how it doesn't show the date (Like her previous Charge did, before the band broke irreparably, and since it's integrated, the whole device was toast).
FitBit doesn't want Pebble in the market because it was a competitor, a better one. With the PT2 we were even going to get an HR-enabled device with an always-on, daylight-readable, waterproof device with better battery life.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
So Pebble (the company) continues to exist (perhaps in receivership) until all it's debtors (which includes warranties) are satisfied.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
That source is in financial trouble and unable to produce the displays Pebble depends on.
Therefore Pebble has no products to sell and thus no cash flow.
Therefore Pebble has had to wind down operations and pay off creditors.
Pebble's IP has some value to Fitbit and hiring a few of Pebble's suddenly-available engineers is a no-brainer but Fitbit has no interest in the Pebble company or it's products.
The lesson is to be very leery of DEPENDING on a single source supplier. Pebble was a healthy going concern until they could no longer get their needed displays. Then it went off the rails.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
And now its watch has ended
Yah, asset sales aren't made in those situations and I'm sure there was competent counsel present.
There's probably no bankruptcy filing now (it's often not advantageous in this type of situation, but --- 99.999% chance this is going chapter 7 or orderly dissolution.
My understanding is that selling off all your assets right before entering bankruptcy is a reason to have those sales reversed by the courts.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
They can pry my pebble watch off my cold, dead, wrist.... Huge loss... at least the developer forum says that the cloud stuff will continue to run and they are planning to spin it off to the user community to run in the future.
The original "Pebble" was "assigned" to an "Assignee" corporation, which sounds a lot like a bankruptcy trustee. It appears this is the way it's done in California. (I would be happy to hear from someone who knows more about this.) So, no, Fitbit is not obligated to do anything. They bought _some_ IP from the assignee which allows the assignee to pay off some of the creditors.
Because that's completely not what happened here.
So saying by March 2017 isn't really that out of sync.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, a fraudulent sale is a reason to have sales unwound by the courts. If you have an arms-length transaction with a willing buyer at a reasonable price, you haven't done anything that a bankruptcy court wouldn't oversee and approve in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The company is done. Even in bankruptcy (which is likely coming), those assets would be sold, the obligations left with the defunct company and discharged, and the cash doled out first to the secured creditors, then (if any is left) to others. There's a rather complex hierarchy of priority, and who gets what amount of cents on the dollar is frequently negotiated, but customers are essentially unsecured creditors and very low in the priority scheme.
In short, you're not going to be able to force someone who only is interested in buying IP to also take on order, warranty, and support obligations for the product.
No, Uber is in court all over the place and having to iron out agreements with municipal and state governments, has been held to be an employer, and is facing class action lawsuits, while and Apple is facing several class action lawsuits over touch diseased iPhones spontaneously becoming i-Can't-Phones.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In this case it turns out that they did do an assignment in bankrupcy, so the bankruptcy approved the disposition of the assets clear of the liabilities. Without that, you don't get to just dispose of the assets to a 3rd party and leave everyone in the lurch - the people left in the lurch also have a legal claim to those same assets, no matter whose hands they are found in.
Try giving away everything you own and then declaring bankruptcy. Any debtor can contest the bankruptcy at that point - one of my friends did exactly that - contested a bankruptcy and held it up for a year - and in the end the judge discharged the debtor of everything except the money owed my friend ($20k or so). You have to do the bankruptcy first, then obtain approval to dispose of the assets so as to make the best recovery possible for the creditors.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Because oftentimes they are buying a functioning business and they must. The secured creditors must release their security interests, the unsecured creditors can file suit and argue that there is successor liability, etc.
The situation is entirely different when the business is failing. Sure, you can't fraudulently sell assets for less than their reasonable value, carve up lines of business in odd ways to separate the revenue-generating portion of the line from the obligations of the line, etc. But you can sell off profitable lines of business for their value, or sell off assets for their value, while keeping the obligations and satisfying those that you can. That's exactly what happens in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy -- functioning parts and things that can be salvaged are sold so that they remain productive assets for someone, with the proceeds going to offset the debts. Since the cash, proceeds, and value of any remaining assets are usually less than the sum of the debts and obligations, there losses are allocated amongst the creditors. And customers are just a different, unsecured class of creditor.
Pebble will end up in bankruptcy, sooner rather than later. Lawyers for the creditors will look at what happened in a period before the bankruptcy to see if there is any way to recover additional funds, but so long as the transactions were reasonable, they won't be undone.
Though technically true the creditors would have to take action and all indications are the Pebble was out of business, with excessive debt and insufficient revenue to cover costs and the indications are they shopped around for a buyer. The creditors could get the sale reversed but only under the assumption that they can locate a better offer, and one of the components of the deal are gone and can't be recovered (the employees). I read a news article that said Pebble had been shopping themselves around for 2 years.
I own an original Pebble from Kickstarter, which I bought before owning a compatible smartphone. Since I'm into running, I ended up replacing my Pebble with a Garmin smartwatch that also provided GPS and a heartrate monitor. (Were I not into running, I'd still be using that original Pebble, since it did everything else I wanted.) I feel like Pebble really started the smart watch revolution, and they did it right -- a simple watch that works with your phone, without attempting to replace it. Unfortunately for them, once the idea was out, any other company could copy it, and that's exactly what happened.
Sadly, the first to market is rarely the one who lasts the longest. Hydrox is gone, but Oreos are here to stay.
A lot of it, which always made me nervous as a user about its future availability. Timeline, weather, almost anything that connected to the Internet went through their servers first--a shortsighted design choice. Voice dictation could also likely be effected. The development kit is also on the cloud, as is the app store, of course.
They didn't give away any assets. They sold them.
The money they received is an asset equal in value to what they disposed of (the IP)
That isn't anything like "giving away everything you own and then declaring bankruptcy"
Only if the sale wasn't an arms length transaction for fair value.
You are confusing the sale of assets with a company paying SOME of its debts prior to filing for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court could claw back some of the debt payments.
Obviously, but Pebble will still have assets and can thus satisfy their contractual commitments to their customers. It seems like FitBit is only acquiring patents (I thought the Pebble ecosystem was promised to be open source at some point) so Pebble as a company will continue to exist until it has settled all debts and claims. If there is an office building, or hell, a desk chair, the company will have 'assets' so it can liquidate those.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com