“In an exclusive interview, CEO Eric Migicovsky revealed that the company shipped its one millionth Pebble on December 31st of last year,” Dan Seifert reports for The Verge. “That’s more than double of what Pebble reported in March, indicating that price cuts and new feature additions later in the year successfully boosted sales figures.”
MacDailyNews Take: And why did Pebble slash their prices?
Well-founded fear.
“Though Pebble has seen a good amount of success thus far, 2015 will most certainly present challenges for the company, most notably the launch of Apple’s Watch in April,” Seifert reports. “The war for your wrist is just getting started, and 2015 is shaping up to see some intense battles go down. With 1 million sales under its belt and a new platform to ride on, Pebble is gearing up for the fight.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What a joke.
Related articles:
Do not buy a so-called ‘smartwatch,’ wait for Apple Watch, it’s going to change the market – November 19, 2014
With Apple Watch looming, Pebble slashes price of smartwatch to $99 – September 30, 2014
“…, Pebble is gearing up for the fight.”
I remember Creative, Palm, Blackberry, and Dell. Amongst others, saying the same thing.
I thought Samsung would be GEARing up.
The same kind of fight a runt kitten can fight against a full grown cat. Mew-chuckled at and then swatted out of the way.
My first comment after years of reading MDN:
I am not sure the Apple watch kills the Pebble. I have a Pebble and I think it is a different thing than the Apple Watch will be. It does not do much, but it does its limited functions fairly well and it is appropriately priced for what it offers.
Pebble’s choices of design are so far from the Apple watch, (always on e-ink screen, light, cheap, 7 day battery life, waterproof, super easy to read in full sun) that I think if they stick to it, and are not foolish enough to chase the incredible list of features that will be provided by the Apple Watch, they will still be around 5 years from now.
Selling a million watches is huge for a company as small as Pebble. They do not need to try to be Apple on this.
Completely agree with this. The iPad didn’t kill e-ink readers. They took away market share, yeah… but as long as there are compelling advantages to e-ink (and there will be for quite some time) I think the Pebble will survive.
Might even thrive if the Apple watch increases interest in the idea and people want one but don’t/can’t afford the real thing. Mind you when that happens as with Smart phones all sorts of cheap Chinese rip offs will hit the market do don’t give it that much of a hope longer term.
Pebble is gearing up to be the cheap alternative to Watch. The basic pebble currently costs $99. Watch starts at $349. It’s entirely possible that the popularity of Apple’s offering may have a halo effect for Pebble. (Despite the fact that it’ll be as useful as a real pebble compared to what Watch will do.)
Pebble wasn’t under much pressure since it’s a relatively small company. If Apple doesn’t sell 10 AppleWatches in a month, the critics will be all over Apple, calling AppleWatch a major flop. It’s all a matter of critics and pundits expectations of Apple. I’m sure Apple will easily sell one million AppleWatches in a weekend but that won’t nearly be enough to satisfy anyone.
I don’t think AppleWatch kills the Pebble. Why should it? Would AppleWatch take away the usefulness of the Pebble? I doubt that. I don’t even know why there need be a comparison between the two smartwatches. I doubt any smartwatch has killed sales of Casio’s watches.
“If Apple doesn’t sell 10 AppleWatches in a month…”
Yeah, that’ll be a serious problem. We’re you trying to write 10,000? Or 10 million (my guess)?
They don’t need to sell 10 million the first month. But selling 10 million for the year will bring in a hefty $4 billion (or so) in extra revenue. Not bad for a new product…
I have a Pebble and I REALLY want an Watch Sport. It’s like having a Chromebook and wanting a MacBook Air, or having a flip phone and wanting an iPhone. So much more functionality, so much better looking, almost perfect. Kinda bummed about no sleep tracking because of battery charge, but it will be so amazing that won’t matter. Also worried about how long it takes for the screen to come on…a full second, instead of always on.
It may charge very quickly, so a little boost while you clean up for dinner, then wear all night and charge it up while you shower and shave in the morning.
I wish that Migicovsky has said that they had sold their millionth Pebble, rather than that they had shipped the millionth.
Some companies use the term shipped to imply sold, when the reality is that the number sold is significantly lower. As far as I’n aware, Pebble doesn’t need to artificially inflate it’s numbers and it would be best to let shady companies talk about shipped products, leaving reputable companies to say how many items were sold.
I can’t comment on the quality of the Pebble, but to be fair to them, if I recall they were starting from nothing. It’s not like with Android watches that are backed by a huge company like Google and manufactured by all sorts of other big companies. 1m is hardly terrible.
Apple also dropped the price of the iPhone when it first launched and when price points for what was essentially a new market were being established.
Personally, whilst I like the Apple Watch, I’m going to wait a generation and see what develops. I bought an iPad and love it, but wouldn’t buy another because I’m perfectly happy with my iPhone and iMac so would rather invest in maxing out any future upgrades to them.
I believe Pebble was a Kickstarter project.
I highly doubt that the Apple Watch will outsell the Pebble. It’s neat, but $350 is simply too much for a smartwatch.
Most of the iPhones that sell are the $200 and $300 models. Most people won’t buy a 128 gigabyte(formerly 64) iPhone because they don’t want to spend $400 on a smartphone; they just want to spend $200, maybe even $300. Someone who doesn’t want to spend $300 on their smartphone definitely won’t want to spend $350 on a watch. Why buy a watch that costs as much as your iPhone?
As cool as the Apple Watch is, it’s just too expensive for practicality, regardless of what it can do. Depending on a person’s income, it’s either foolishly expensive or an expensive toy.
I’ve noted your comment. Will be back here after Apple Watch launch weekend numbers are reported. It won’t be good for you.
Actually, those $200 or $300 iPhones are actually $600 and $700 devices, most of which are paid off over the life of the typical two-year contract.
More and more people are gladly paying full price upfront, and discovering it’s cheaper to buy service separately. My hunch is the AppleWatch will sell just fine. If they only sell the watch to TWO percent of iPhone users, they will have a successful product. And I think they’ll do a lot better than that.
I remember when iPod cost more than $350.00 and it gave a hell of a lot less than the Watch.
I remember when the first iPhone cost way more than $350.00 and it gave a hell of a lot less than the Watch.
I think you Pebble way too much.
Somehow I think this is a big deal only to the doofuses who run this website.
Sure apple will sell a ton of watches in a weekend. Any other obvious predictions you dumb fucks? lol
Did you get the day off from tenth grade? Cool story, bro.
LOL, in a weekend. This guy knows nothing.
Try in the first 5 minutes.
With the pent up demand for the Apple Watch, I think they could do it. That does not mean the following weekend or months, but opening night at midnight. I think you will see orders/preorders, take down their servers and basically an iPhone purchasing experience, for the sport edition.
The Gold edition is completely different. I bet you “HAVE” to go into the store for that one and there will be no lines.
I’ll be going into the store to try out the stainless model and look over the accessory straps before purchasing one. I can’t decide between black and regular stainless without seeing it in bright light. I also don’t yet know which band will come with the watch.