Is smartwatch still a good option for Fitbit?

Fitbit seems to be losing its market share. For the recent quarter, the company sold 6.5MM of its fitness devices, down from 8.2MM a year ago. However, active users grew 37% to 23.2MM from 16.9MM at year-end 2015.

Conversation 5 comments

  • ben55124

    Premium Member
    23 February, 2017 - 6:19 pm

    <p>Since they bought the pebble team, I hope they do something more than just fitness tracking. They need to figure out something that will grow the market and convince existing customers to upgrade — a more difficult task than phones.</p>

  • lordbaal1

    23 February, 2017 - 6:49 pm

    <p>Market <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">share</span> isn't the be all end all. As long as they're making a profit. Then who cares if they lost market share.</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2017 - 2:24 pm

    <p>If the number of new active users is roughly equal to the number of recent sales, that just means they're still selling to new users rather than selling a lot of upgrades/replacements. The overall decline in sales indicates that they may be saturating their natural market. To the extent that they rely on hardware sales for profitability, this is a problem. They'll need to convince people to replace/upgrade their devices. Hard to say at this point what the lifecycle of a Fitbit device should be, but I hope they're looking at other ways to generate revenue. </p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2017 - 2:38 pm

    <p> I'd like to see them or another OEM work on a pure notifications device. Rather than trying to cram all of the fitness stuff and the smartwatch stuff into one device that does it all, have separate lines. If my Band 2 dropped all of the fancy sensors in return for an extra day or two of battery life I'd gladly take it. For me, the best part of a smartwatch is cutting down on the number of times I need to grab my phone. If I'm on the go, I can leave it in my pocket. If I'm at home I can leave it sitting on the counter. Conversely, if I'm looking for a fitness wearable I don't need it interrupting me with texts, tweets and notifications while I'm exercising. And I don't need it to be fashionable enough to wear all day. </p>

  • knopfler96

    25 February, 2017 - 9:57 am

    <p>Any final word on gatt server in the creators update?</p>

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