“Fitbit’s shares plunged following the announcement of its first colour smartwatch at the CES tech show,” Leo Kelion reports for BBC News. “The San Francisco-based company’s stock fell more than 18%.”
“The Blaze watch provides notification alerts and can control what music a wirelessly-connected smartphone is playing via its colour touchscreen. But like the rest of the firm’s line-up, its focus is on health,” Kelion reports. “It does not include its own GPS chip, so it must be paired with a phone to provide location-tracking data.”
“The central module costs $200 (£136) and can be swapped between a range of wristbands and straps that will cost between $30 and $130,” Kelion reports. “That makes it cheaper than the Apple Watch… The question is whether consumers will prefer to spend more to have the ability to tap into a large library of third-party apps. ‘If I were an investor, I would ask ‘what competitive advantage does Fitbit bring to the table?’ and ‘do we want to compete against Apple, Google and Samsung?” said Julie Ask from Forrester Research. ‘Having an app ecosystem, and ease of use is so important in this sector.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: ‘Tis quite the wakeup call – or at least it should be – when your stock drops 18% after you unveil your new product.
As we wrote on Tuesday: “A bit of advice for Fitbit: Concentrate on cheap (under $100) fitness bands until you’re bought or you fold, whichever comes first.”
SEE ALSO:
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