“Fitbit, the fitness tracking device maker, plans to sell shares on the New York Stock Exchange,” Peter Cohan writes for Forbes. “Should you buy some or is Apple Watch too much of a threat? I think you should wait until six months after the IPO and decide then.”
“Fitbit made a $131.8 million profit in 2014 on revenue that nearly tripled to $745.4 million,” Cohan writes. “‘Since 2007, Fitbit has sold roughly 20.5 million of its fitness-tracking devices — from the $60 Zip clip-on to the $250 Surge wristwatch — with more than half sold last year alone, according to the Wall Street Journal.”
“Apple and Fitbit have parted ways. Until November 2014, Apple sold Fitbit fitness trackers in Apple stores but no longer does. And last October Fitbit announced that it had no plans to support Apple’s HealthKit software because the Fitbit Surge would be a direct competitor to the Apple Watch,” Cohan writes. “Parks Associates expects smart watches to account for 68 million of the 135 million connected health device market – with fitness trackers from the likes of Fitbit representing 50 million of that total.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dedicated fitness trackers remind us of PDAs in mid-2007. Very popular at the time, yet totally supplanted rather quickly.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
R.I.P. Fitbit 2016
Is MDN waiting until after the IPO to use Beleaguered for FitBit? 🖖😀⌚️
I really liked my Fitbit one. Gave it to my sister now that I have the watch.
Fitbit ecosystem is so broken, and their distancing themselves from Apple is crazy. Apple announced the Health app on stage with a big picture of a Fitbit. Fitbit has a MobileTrack feature already to sync motion data from newer iPhones. My Fitbit was a gateway device that helped rationalize my purchase of the Watch. I still try to stay involved in the Fitbit world with challenges, but my data will not sync – and this is Fitbit’s fault. I can get my iPhone data not my Watch data (which can be a 2000 step difference daily). I tried. I have stopped organizing challenges (the thing that helps keep people on their platform), and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Apple wanted to be your friend. Not everyone is buying a Watch, but many who do still have friends and family with Fitbits. Let us play together, and I’m sure you will succeed. I would assume VERY few people are not buying Apple Watches because of Fitbit, but they will be losing their stickiness with their current customers if they don’t decide to integrate. Share your data, or lose a lot of customers…