We're starting to see detailed reports about the imminence of the next generation of Android Wear watches. Android Police and TechnoBuffalo are running sneak photos of two versions of the LG Watch Style. (Seriously, can some smart branding person please whack LG upside the head?) There are two versions being tipped: a standard Android Wear 2.0 watch at $249, and an LTE … [Read more...]
Fitbit’s 4Q Disappoints, Lays Off 6 Pct of Workers
If there was any doubt that 2016 was a bad year in the wristwear business, look no further than the 4th quarter results that Fitbit announced today. The company -- widely counted as the leader in the consumer wearables market -- had told stock analysts that it would sell about $725 million worth of trackers in the quarter; the actual number was about $580 million. Rather … [Read more...]
Is a Fitbit Smartwatch Coming? Sure Looks Like It: CES
There was nothing explicit about Ftbit's plans at CES, but the dots were there to connect. Fitbit CEO James Park told The Verge at the conference that his company was building an app store, like the one for Pebble, the assets of which Fitbit bought a month earlier. The thing about Fitbit's product line is that there's no product for apps to run on, so Park's comment was … [Read more...]
How Accurate Are Walking Trackers? A Report from CES 2017
For the last few CES shows, we've been strapping on as many fitness trackers as would fit on our wrists, hitting the floors and conference rooms, and comparing results. We don't expect accuracy -- we don't do a manual count of steps -- but we hope for a degree of consistency. When we first did this three years ago, trackers showed error of more than 35 percent, which meant the … [Read more...]
Fitbit Cuts Guidance, Stock Gets Hammered
Live by the wristband, die by the wristband. Fitbit reported its third-quarter earnings this afternoon, reporting year-over-year growth of 23 percent to $503.8 million. Analysts had been expecting $506.9 million, which doesn't sound like much of a miss; earnings of 19 cents per share met expectations. Unit sales grew 11 percent, and so did average selling price. The real … [Read more...]
Apple Watch’s Heart Monitor is More Accurate than Fitbit’s, Says JAMA
The journal JAMA Cardiology has published a research letter that found that the Apple Watch's heart rate monitor is more accurate than the one in Fitbit's Charge HR, and is matched only by the Mio Alpha. The study, led by doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, compared the heart rates reported by monitors in a range of wrist-worn consumer devices to the rates reported by an EKG … [Read more...]
IDC Says Basic Wearables Growing Fast; Fitbit, Xiaomi, Apple, Garmin Top Vendors
IDC is out with its quarterly count of the fitness tracker market, and it's finding that basic models are growing fast, while more advanced gadgets aren't. The market researcher breaks the world down into "basic" and "smart" wearables; the latter supports third-party apps, the former doesn't. If you accept those definitions, and we think it's a little simplistic, IDC's count … [Read more...]
Fitbit Promises New Trackers This Year, Probably Including NFC
When Fitbit announced its quarterly results yesterday, CEO James Park said that the company would announce "more new products for this holiday season that we've ever had before." Given the company's iffy record of making holiday ship dates, that may translate to "two or three." The top of the company's line are the Charge HR, the Surge, and the Blaze. The Blaze was announced … [Read more...]
Fitbit Buys Coin’s Wearable Payments Tech
Fitbit's been trying for more than a year to get NFC payment technology into its products; we picked up a strong rumor a few months ago (which we were unable to adequately confirm) that Fitbit had built production quantities of a fitness tracker with payment tech but was unable to get it to work properly. Today comes news that Fitbit has bought the wearable payment tech … [Read more...]
Fitbit’s Road to Success Narrows
Wearable Tech Insider does not do stock or financial analysis, but Fitbit's 1Q results, released yesterday, said interesting things about the state of the company. Sales and earnings in the quarter beat analysts expectations, but the company's profit outlook for 2Q were a third to a half of what was expected. (Sales, however, were projected to be strong.) As a result, the … [Read more...]