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.

Comments

Sad

[WoodburyMan]

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"

Re:Sad

[Tukz]

And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying.

But they're not buying the company.
This is from TFA: "We have made the tough decision to shut down the company and no longer manufacture Pebble devices"

Sounds like they sold software right to FitBit and are shutting Pebble down.

Re:Sad

[hey!]

Well, I dunno. It seems like blaming Fitbit for Pebble's financial failure.

Let's take a consequentialist view of matters. If the rule is you have to buy the whole business and continue to operate it, even though it's losing money, Pebble goes out of business and it's customers and debt holders suffer. If you can sell of just the good bits without the obligation to continue running the failing as before, the customers suffer but the debt holders get some relief. Which approach is better?

Re:New type of Kickstarter scam

[mlyle]

More like.. go bankrupt but partially manage to pay off your bank debt by selling some assets to FitBit.

Re:Warranty Support?

[mlw4428]

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.

Re:Fitbit is next

[grub]

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.

Re:Warranty Support?

[guruevi]

So Pebble (the company) continues to exist (perhaps in receivership) until all it's debtors (which includes warranties) are satisfied.

Without their needed displays Pebble was doomed

[maggard]

Pebble had a single source supplier for their displays.

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.

Re:Without their needed displays Pebble was doomed

[Grishnakh]

The problem here is that it's very hard to build a technological product without depending on a single source supplier somewhere. Just look at any smartphone: they all have at least semi-custom CPUs; you can't just drop in a different one, even if they are all ARM-based. Usually all the other complex chips are the same. You can design a new product (or maybe a new version that mostly looks and works the same from the user's perspective) with an alternate part, in many cases, but that's a more serious undertaking.

Unfortunately for Pebble, it sounds like their product design was based on a type of display (e-ink) that just isn't all that widely used, especially now that e-books seem to have abandoned them. You can't make a smart-watch with a backlit LCD that runs for over a week without recharging; this is simply against the laws of physics, so e-ink was the obvious choice to make a product like this. I don't see how they really could have done anything different in regards to their screen supply choice.

Re: So sad

[lord_mike]

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.

Re:Warranty Support?

[srw]

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.

Re:Warranty Support?

[DRJlaw]

My understanding is that selling off all your assets right before entering bankruptcy is a reason to have those sales reversed by the courts.

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.