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 pretty interesting.,
Then, Fitbit just acquihired a Romanian company called Vector, which has (you guessed it) an “affordable luxury” smartwatch with an e-ink screen. One of the interesting things about Vector’s watch (which we have not seen) is that its battery supposedly lasts for a month. Also, it uses a proprietary operating system that accommodates a — wait for it — app store.
Fitbit also seems to be playing with modest apps for its existing products. As part of its corporate wellness deal with Qualcomm and UnitedHealthcare, users can turn on a feature in the Charge 2 ROM that allows the insurance company to see your activity data. That’s not an app the way you might initially think about it, but it’s a new thing for Fitbit: loading software into ROM and giving users some control over it. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.
For more coverage from CES 2017, click on the CES2017 tag.
