Android Wear 2.0 is late -- not that anyone seems to be panting after it. So Google has bought out a company called iMCO, which just shipped a shipped a smartwatch that used Amazon's Alexa voice recognition engine. The CoWatch runs an Android-based OS called Cronologics. It does the usual things that you expect a smartwatch to do, although reports are that the $299 CoWatch … [Read more...]
The Last Days of Pebble
The eminent tech journalist Steve Levy has, over the years, been writing a series of articles about Pebble, chronicling the company's growth. He filed the last one yesterday -- this time, about its demise. CEO Eric Migicovsky told Levy that Pebble realized too late that what people seem to want out of smartwatches above all are health apps. Migocovsky also said that Pebble's … [Read more...]
Pebble Sells to Fitbit, Ceases Sales [Updated]
Fitbit confirmed this morning that it has bought software and intellectual property of smartwatch pioneer Pebble, explicitly excluding its hardware. No price was mentioned in the company's statement. Bloomberg News reported late yesterday that Fitbit has offered jobs to Pebble's programmers as Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky is about to join VC firm Y Combinator. Fitbit's … [Read more...]
Moto Says No New Smartwatch Anytime Soon
Once upon a time, the Moto 360 was the best Android Wear smartwatch on the market, which is not unlike calling someone "the world's tallest midget." But as Google got busy with other projects and consumers failed to warm to the attractions of the platform, sales appear to have leveled off. A couple of months ago, Google said that the next version of Wear, anticipated for 2016, … [Read more...]
Osterhout Raises $58 Million for AR Glasses
The Osterhout Design Group has finished its first fundraising round, picking up $58 million to develop its line of augmented and virtual reality glasses, the company said. ODG is an interesting company. Its roots are in military heads-up displays, and it first hit the media radar in 2014 when it sold a pack of patents to Microsoft for a reported $150 million. So while the … [Read more...]
Reports: Pebble Selling Out to Fitbit
Reports started surfacing late last night that smartwatch and crowdfunding pioneer Pebble is about to sell out to Fitbit for a comparatively small payday. TechCrunch, citing a post on the big-ticket site The Information, says Fitbit will pay something less than $40 million for Pebble. Our previous coverage of Pebble would indicate that that price would pretty much cover 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...]
Qualcomm Buys NXP For $47 Billion Cash
The rumors proved to be true: Qualcomm, the leader in cellphone chips, is buying NXP, maker of NFC chips. Price: $47 billion, an 11 percent premium over yesterday's close. Although NXP is best known in the wearables and smartphone worlds as the leader in NFC technology, the rest of the world knows it as the biggest maker of processors in the car industry through its recent … [Read more...]
Apple Leads a Flat Smartwatch Business, Says IDC, With Garmin Strong
The authoritative market research company IDC says smartwatch sales dropped 51.6 percent last quarter from the year previous, although it suggests that the results are distorted by Apple's vast success last year. In 3Q15, when the Apple Watch was generally available for the first time, Apple sold 3.9 million units, IDC said, accounting for 70.2 percent of the market. This … [Read more...]
ShotTracker TEAM Attracts Hoops Stars in $5M Seed Round
We last wrote about ShotTracker about two years ago, when the company first shipped its basketball analytics wearable. We're told now that that there's a team version of ShotTracker -- and that it's attracted former LA Laker Magic Johnson and former NBA Commissioner David Stern as part of a $5 million seed round. The standalone version of ShotTracker comprises a sensor on … [Read more...]