Saying that a company with an agreement to be acquired for $2.1 billion was killed may sound like an exaggeration. Many start-ups aim to one day be “killed” in such fashion. However, Google’s decision to acquire Fitbit amounts to a mercy kill, putting an official end to Fitbit’s implosion at the hands of Apple Watch. In just three years, the Apple Watch turned Fitbit from a household name as the wearables industry leader into a company that will eventually be viewed as an asterisk when the wearables story is retold to future generations…
How did Fitbit go from being considered the wearables leader to viewing a $2.1B acquisition as its best hope for shareholders to recoup any value? What led Fitbit to run out of options as an independent company?
Two words: Apple Watch.
A good argument can be made that Fitbit died a while ago, and the company is merely running on fumes from the dedicated fitness tracker glory days. With Fitbit, Google is acquiring a dying wearables platform.
MacDailyNews Take: Fitbit is Apple Watch roadkill. (And Google is stupid for wasting $2.1 billion on it.)
People shouldn’t underestimate Apple. Doing so has fatal consequences. Ask RIM, Motorola, Palm, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Fitbit is the Palm of the twenty-tens… The only thing keeping Fitbit alive is their legacy user base and sequestering their step data. — MacDailyNews, January 25, 2018