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Fitness Wearable Maker Fitbit To Cut Six-Percent of Its Staff Following a Disappointing Q4 (techcrunch.com)
As anticipated, wearable leader Fitbit kicked off the week by announcing a six-percent reduction in global work force, following disappointing fourth quarter financials. From a report: A preliminary statement issued this morning details the loss of 110 jobs, as part of a "reorganization of its business" designed to "creat[e] a more focused and efficient operating model." The news follows what has been a disappointing several months for the wearable space at large, impacting even Fitbit, the dominant player in the space. As rivals like Jawbone grapple with the future and the smartwatch space looks dismal, however, the Fitbit has been making acquisitions, including the once promising smartwatch pioneer Pebble, which met with its own struggles as the year drew to a close. The financials detail 6.5 million devices sold for the fourth quarter of last year, with quarterly revenue and annual revenue growth both falling below the company's guidance range.
6% = 110, how many employees do they need?
My experience with digital fitness devices is that they suck. I run the same route about three to four times a week, and usually in roughly the same amount of time (give or take a minute or two). I get bizarre differences in distance and pace that could only be accounted for by either the earth beneath my feet expanding or contracting, and possibly entering some sort of temporal distortion field.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nobody except n00bZ use either
Studies have even shown that devices like Fit bit discourage you from exercise, by setting limits on what you do.
Real exercise is a matter of just adding a little more each day, and realizing pain is there to tell you to cut back or stop.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It seems the business strategy of buying up and shutting down their competition while failing to produce a decent product themselves has not been successful.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
But do you need the device? One needs to get on a treadmill, run around the block, ride a bike, attend aerobics, or whatever your favorite exercise is on a regular basis. Does a Fitbit help you with that?
Sure - for those motivated by the Gaming of Exercise (level up each day) it's a fabulous device. Serious runners want pacing help..okay (level beyond my ability). Those few who need/want/understand-why they want it must already have them. Saturated market.
The rest of the population though is asking "why do I need this?" -- you either work out or you don't and the "scale" gives you the only feedback you really need. You go for a run. Done. Fitbit tells you that you ran? I already know that. If I'm suffering from pantstootightist then I run more often and skip the pizza & beer. Fitbit isn't helping with how much goes In. It's a pretty bracelet that blinks the time.
I gave one to my wife recently and she has yet to take it out of the packing. But she still works out. I have an iWatch and love email/text integration and iPay. Oh - yeah it monitors my workouts. Sure it's fun to have this thing say "Good job - you worked out every day this week!!" Not that I get notification every week - the watch doesn't help me achieve the goal - rather notifies me when I do. But I see it as just an extravagant watch.
All told though - the notification that I've been sitting on my butt all day makes it worth it. Reminds me that there are more important things in the world and I should go home and play with the kids.
No pain go gain?
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
To go from your cubicle at Fitbit to the front door security escorts you to.
i use strava on iphone and galaxy phones and it's usually OK but sometimes the distance changes by .1 of a mile depending how you make your turns
The wearable device bubble is ending, mainly because manufacturers are finding that they're not Apple. Even Apple is having trouble convincing the true believers to buy their first Apple Watches, let alone upgrade them. Fitbit and friends probably saw the following:
- A lot of the purchases are gifts or corporate giveaways from a company's health insurance plan. They get used for a while, then thrown in a drawer.
- Even among the hardcore users, there's very little reason to upgrade unless new must-have features, so you're not going to get the once-every-18-months cash infusions that Apple had recently been getting for iPhones.
- It's expensive to build and maintain the apps that attach the devices to the users' phones, and the data can't really be monetized the same way Google search history can.
Microsoft even dumped the Microsoft Band, probably realizing very similar things Fitbit did. The question is, are they hoping for an acquisition from a watch maker or something, and just trying to hold out long enough to get the founders their exit money? Also, why so many employees to design a hardware specification once, then build a simple phone app? Did they just get pumped full of startup money and go on a hiring spree?
Wearables are neat - I have one of the Garmin ones and it works well. But I'm not buying a new one every year.
it's for the data idiots who think they need months of data to analyze their workouts to get better. no, just push yourself
Two things, if you "need" such a device to get you motivated, then you are approaching the whole exercise thing incorrectly, and I would give it 2-3 weeks before said device starts gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. Secondly if you are serious about exercising, then why not keep a physical exercise journal? The gym that I belong to gives them out for free--or even easier, buy a spiral notebook for a couple of bucks?
But every hour I spend analysing my health data is an hour I can avoid exercising!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Actually I find myself agreeing with this, having been through two tech startup bubbles in my working life now. There's plenty of "real work" out there if we could just reallocate the resources that get flushed down the toilet in startup-land. One of the best things we could do is something similar to what the Chinese did around 2008 -- pump massive amounts of money into infrastructure. We'd be able to rebuild a lot of the stuff that's been slowly rotting away since our last golden age of the postwar era, and we'd have something to show for it rather than BS marketing-driven tech bubble companies.
At the same time, yes, give people who aren't doing anything useful money to stay out of the workforce. It's a lot cheaper than paying for the increased crime that comes with poverty that comes with unemployment. It's sad, but as even knowledge worker jobs get automated away, there will only be a subset of the population that is capable of doing the level of work that remains. Think about your average big company -- what percent of the staff could you get rid of today with minimal impact? That percent has been creeping up pretty high in recent years and it's only going to get worse. Does an IT services company need thousands of "account executives" whose sole job is to take customers to lunch and get them to buy more BS services contracts? How about all the people in marketing? Most could go with no impact. Once you do that, however, you have the problem of what to do with everyone. So, either we incentivize busy work in the private sector, create make-work jobs in the public sector, or just pay people to stay away. Anything else will lead to a complete breakdown in society; look what happened when unemployment got around 10% in 2008-2009 -- now triple or quadruple that.
Early on I felt like I needed some motivation. As it turns out it actually seemed to make exercise more of a chore, so I dispensed with it. If I really want to know things like pace and distance, I can sort that out without a device. As to things like heart rate, does that matter? It's the kind of thing that can turn exercise into a obsessive fixation, as opposed to what it should be, a way to get and stay fit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
These two facts are not inconsistent with each other:
(1) You have to measure something to take control of it.
(2) Measurement is a waste of time for most people.
What this means is most people fail at change, because they don't hold themselves accountable to themselves. But if you want to be the exception, you'd better find ways of taking control. Of course using this particular device isn't necessary; it's just a convenience. The problem is that inconvenience isn't really most peoples' problem. Wishful thinking is.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem is that there are a metric shit ton of necessary shitty minimum wage jobs left, we ain't at the AI singularity just yet. How do you keep them filled if life long comfortable security can be had for no work at all?
Especially with immigration providing a sheer infinite pool of people who wouldn't mind to get basic income at western levels. The welfare state is utterly incompatible with mass immigration.
I used to use the freebie Google Fit. Then I bought this Fitbit. And I was struggling to meet my daily goal of 10K steps. Then about eight weeks in, I found that I had not turned off the Google Fit. It had been faithfully giving me some 7K or 8K steps every day, which I did not even know about! Man, what an epiphany!! I immediately bought a jawbone device and a misfit. Now I am getting about 8K steps from each and doing 32 K steps like gangbusters without breaking a sweat.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I feel like many fad technologies, most of it's market isn't people buying them for themselves, but as gifts. With birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, Valentine's, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc etc etc, it's a huge pain to get a gift that the average adult: doesn't already have, hasn't already received, and haven't bought for themselves by spending 5 seconds on Amazon. With fad technologies, at least there's less of a chance they already one. (Or even if they do, it's OK, because you're buying them the newest, shiniest one!!!)
I agree. I think that people want to get fit, and honestly that they wear one to show people that they are working out. I see people wearing them that either don't work out, or clearly aren't doing it right. They don't need a fitbit to give them that info. I work on the 6th floor. I see people with fitbits, and they take the elevator. I take the stairs every day.
When the fad started catching on, I looked into them out of curiosity. $100+ ballpark. Wow. It seems to be that with advances in technology, practicality has gone out the window. In the information age, people don't seem to know any more than they did 20 years ago. It's all just chasing fads. When I was recently at a family gathering I was questioned why I don't eat carbs. (I have been paleoish for 4 years now) I was asked "Do you eat eggs?" I answered it with a simple, "yes, I eat about a dozen a week". What I wanted to say was "Do you even know what a carb is?!" The person who asked me is a nurse.
It boggles my mind sometimes about how we are so directionally off course. Gadgets to help you refine your exercise plan? Sure, I suppose. Gadgets to pretend you have such a well established exercise plan that you need to make minor refinements to fine-tune your performance, so you can monitor your step count on the way to Taco Bell? I don't know where to start.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
For myself, I find basically just holding myself to a certain amount of time and distance per day. I can do that with a stop watch. Things like the calorie counting that most devices have are just voodoo fiction that I've found don't even match the very generalized calorie burning tables out there.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Consistency counts more than accuracy. For example, it's pretty clear that fitness band calorie estimates are inaccurate. What's more even if you measure and log everything you eat, chances are those numbers are off quite a bit too.
Now suppose the numbers tell you you should be losing weight, but in fact you're gaining weight. What should you do? Well eat less and exercise more. But how do you know you're actually doing this?
There's more than one way. You can take big, hard to misconstrue steps, like intermittent fasting, or massive increases in exercise. Or you can use numbers to tweak you calorie balance downward; it doesn't really matter if the balance measurement is accurate as long as the direction you move in is accurate.
I've done both ways, and they both work. In fact I'd say they both have their own distinct value. If you've never really been hungry, voluntarily fasting can train you realize that a little hunger pang, or even the mindless impulse to eat something, is not a life-threatening emergency. I know plenty of people who have what amount to a phobia about being hungry.
In the long run what you want to do is establish sustainable better habits. The measurement approach is useful, for example in recalibrating what you perceive as "a lot of food to eat".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No: https://www.theguardian.com/te...
That's-terrible. If-I was-one of-them I-might go-out and-drink ten-beers.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
More people are realizing that a smartwatch is a better investment; it can do a lot more than just fitness tracking. Plus, the fitbit bands break so easily...
Sure - for those motivated by the Gaming of Exercise (level up each day) it's a fabulous device.
Speaking from personal experience - this can work. But, after a month or so, you've successfully changed your habits... and at that point the device is superfluous.
I had a Garmin VivoSmart, and it did help get me walking. But I found that the "extra" features where what I really found useful - notifications, alarm clock on my wrist, stuff like that. Problem was, the Garmin (and the FitBits I've seen) don't do any of that particularly well... which is why I eventually bought an Apple Watch.
But, even though I really like the watch, it's still an experiment. If this thing ends up having a useful lifetime of 3-4 years, then I'll consider it a success and will buy another (or whatever like gadget is available at that point). But if the thing only lasts a year or two, that'll be it - it's too expensive for what it does.
#DeleteChrome
There is no wearable market - it's all hype. Just look at the landscape, Google Glass - dead. Iwatch sales crashed July '16. now the market leader FitBit fumbles. Battery life on wearables suck, you can't read them if you're over 40 (aka - people with money) , and really... what does it provide? You get show off how hip you are, but then the newness wears off and you realize so too does the usefulness. Does the trend line resemble "must have" 3D tvs?
Short of wearing full diagnostic gear to test oxygenation levels, blood sugar levels and the like, no calorie counter is ever going to be accurate. As it stands, I consider the calorie counts in fitness devices and apps to basically be voodoo. They don't even really jive to the average calorie tables which are themselves simply averages based on certain kinds of activity and weight of the individual. Frankly, I think the whole thing really is just a load of horseshit. If a device with a GPS can't even get distance within a few hundred feet on identical runs, then so far as I'm concerned it's largely useless, save perhaps as a chronometer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yep, they suck. They are NOT waterproof as initially advertised, and go tits up when wearing in the wet. The bands suck because they fall off your arm randomly, and 2 of them I had simply stopped working after a few months. I finally got a Garmin Vivofit 3 and so far, so good. It is 6 months or so old, and has worked fine. Like the Fitbit software a bit better, but not enough to put up with having to keep buying new ones all the time.
It helps me get motivated when I get to the health club and make the final decision between "let's do it" and "too tired." Being 69 years old, "too tired" wins too often. But stringing consecutive days of blue-colored bars on the graph of my Vivofit 3 software, that signify my goal of 10,000 steps is motivation enough most of the time - I want to see 7 straight achievements of "goal" each week. If I get it, I might just lose an ounce or 2. Goal requires about 1200 calories on the elliptical, done in about an hour and 20 minutes. 9 hrs and 20 minutes of exercise a week makes my heart really strong, too, enough to survive dual pulmonary emboli a couple years ago that 3 medical people told me would have killed me except for my heart being as strong as it was. So far, my strategy of living forever thru exercise is working, and I've won round 1.
Now to get out of the car and go into Sport and Health and get on the elliptical...
No one's interested in your cat.
The best thing we could do is to pass the Fair Tax, which completely abolishes ALL the income taxes. Income taxes are ALL, even in the tiniest amounts, harmful to prosperity. Income taxes are the 2nd worst mistake this country has ever made, 2nd only to slavery. Hopefully it won't take another war to get rid of them too. We could be the manufacturing center of the world under the Fair Tax.
This.
I have had two so far, the first made it 3 months before the strap delaminated, and the second lasted 6 months before
the surround at the back that goes over the button broke. The first one I had replaced under warrantee, the second I
didnt even bother. I have the replacement sitting on the shelf, I havnt even bothered opening it.
(I had bought two, one for myself, one for the other half..)
Overpriced, moderately useful, but hardly revolutionary. The price to lifetime is just a joke.
Honestly, I like the idea of a heart-rate monitor, but when I'm looking for a wearable, the first thing I want is
a) A watch. I like the idea of a good looking watch (stainless steel etc etc), and something that I can just quickly glance at my wrist and check time, and it doesn't need to be charged every day. I had a Pebble - good battery life but a bit plasticy looking - and was *REALLY* looking forward to their Time 2.0 for this.
b) Second is of course smartwatch features. Stuff like getting messages, and at least some basic others like controlling music and denying calls, etc
c) Finally, a fitness tracker would be nice to have, with the basic functionality of a heart-rate monitor. Again the newer Pebble would have had this. Alas, 'twas not to be.
It really seems we're trying to tag smart functionality onto health devices, or watch functionality onto a smart device. It should be the other way around.
perhaps they said that after being conquered by Rome, but likely not as usually local language was retained for the common folk. The folks in Rome might have said it though
As to things like heart rate, does that matter?
I'd argue that is one of the only valuable items it adds. Reach and stay in a target heartrate and you can be fairly confident you're having an effective workout. The rest is just bells and whistles.
In a similar way, the more important bike computer to have for training is the cadence (as opposed to speedometer). Just push as much as you can at a target cadence and adjust gears as needed to get up hills/etc and you'll keep improving.
The only problem with both of those techniques is that it's really boring to try to keep one number at the same value (heartrate or cadence), so we're back to all the fitness games.
It's more like: people tend to do the same workout routine. Measurement once is kinda fun/interesting, but after that is pretty useless. So when your friends ask you about it you're all "meh"
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
There's never been a useful idea in the history of the world couched in such language.
And pretty soon we'll have the black-box neural networks to prove it.
Yes - that's the same way I feel about my iWatch. Too expensive for what I use it for - so it will last a long time, and if not I'll go back to my $30 Timex which is still ticking on the same battery in the drawer 8 years after I bought it. Geez - buying a $200 watch used to be an extravagant dress watch - a wedding or PhD graduation present. Bullet proof - dive features - diamond plating - solar charging - never needs a battery. Now $200 gives you a plastic wrist band and 11 hours of battery.
BUT - the first digital watch I saw had an LED screen which you pressed a button to see the time - because it used so much power the battery would be dead soon. A friend of my Dad had one and I remember him preventing us from pressing the button all the time - it was very cool to see this thing. And it was expensive and it was "first." You pay for "first"
Cadence meters are expensive as hell compared to speedometers.
I guess that is a relative judgement, they seem reasonably priced to me. A couple examples:
* $40 Wahoo Cadence Sensor, which talks to your phone or other bike computers - https://www.amazon.com/Wahoo-C...
* $32 Cateye Strada speed + cadence, a traditional wired bike computer - https://www.amazon.com/CatEye-...
It's about the same price (or more) for similar quality items (ex. from same company even).
I'm pretty sure the cadence ones are more expensive only because they include both speed and cadence (there are very few dedicated cadence meters - in most cases, you either get speed, or speed+cadence). But it's not *that* much more expensive.