Fitbit announced better-than-expected revenues for the quarter ending March 31 thanks to a 117 percent increase in smartwatch sales.
“We saw continued momentum across our business in the first quarter, with revenue up 10 percent and devices sold up 36 percent year-over-year,” Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park said in a prepared statement. “Smartwatch device sales increased 117 percent YOY, and the introduction of our new trackers, Inspire and Inspire HR, helped spark the first quarter of year-over-year growth in tracker device sales in three years.”
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
Fitbit posted a net loss of $79.5 million on revenues of $272 million. Smartwatches were the primary driver of those revenues, Fitbit said, with its tracker business growing only 17 percent by revenue in the quarter. Total devices sold jump 36 percent by unit sales YOY. Versa Lite is the firm’s biggest success story so far in 2019.
Fitbit also reported that its Health Solutions business grew 70 percent YOY and delivered $30.5 million in revenues.
“New users are continuing to join the Fitbit platform with active users increasing in the first quarter,” Park added, “underscoring the effectiveness of our strategy to bring more users onto the Fitbit platform with the introduction of more accessible, affordable devices.”
According to Counterpoint, Fitbit is now the fourth-biggest maker of smartwatches, behind Apple, which dominates this market, Samsung, and Imoo. But as is the case in smartphones, Huawei grew share faster than any of its competitors in the most recent quarter and should establish itself as a top player sometime this year.
provision l-3
<p>Paul is really stretching to spin this one as positive. </p><p><br></p><p>So fitbit smartwatches grew by 117% and trackers grew 17% with total wearables up 36% as a whole. That is great right? Triple and double digit growth! Except that 36% growth is from 2.2 to 2.9* million and if you do the math to break out smartwatches and wearables. Smartwatches went from 0.58 million to 1.08 million and wearables went from 1.6 million to 1.9. It really isn't that impressive. Worse is the average selling price dropped by 19% to 91 dollars. If your most expensive item is driving the growth then you should see the ASP go up not down. That means the growth is coming at by reducing the asking price. The net result was that growth netted them 7% revenue growth on wearables. And wearables is what is actually driving their revenue growth. </p><p><br></p><p>Given the company isn't profitable and is forecasting more loses it is hard to see how they are going to get there when what growth they can get is by putting stuff on sale. This turkey is done, put a fork in it. </p><p><br></p><p>*The wearables numbers are actually lower as this include fit bits sale of scales as well.</p>