Tomas Chlebek Although Fitbit makes the most popular wearable products and sells the most of them worldwide. But at the same time, it feels increasing pressure from manufacturers of even more complex smart products. Also about that and the overall state of the company and its place on the market they write in his text The New York Times.
The latest device introduced by Fitbit is Fitbit Blaze. According to the company, it belongs to the "smart fitness watch" category, but its biggest competition is of course smart watches, led by the Apple Watch. They also have to compete with the other Fitbit products for customer interest, but the Blaze stands out the most because of their design, price and features.
From the first reviews, Fitbit Blaze has been compared to the Apple Watch, Android Wear watches, etc., and praised only for a few features, such as long battery life.
Since its founding in 2007, Fitbit has become the most successful company producing wearables for measuring sports activities. It sold 2014 million devices in 10,9 and twice as many in 2015, 21,3 million.
In June of last year, the company's shares became public, but since then their value, despite the continued growth of the company's sales, has fallen by a full 10 percent. Because Fitbit's devices are proving to be too single-purpose, which have little chance of keeping customers' attention in the world of multi-functional smartwatches.
Although more and more people are buying Fitbit devices, it is not certain that a significant part of new users will also buy other devices from the company, or their newer versions. Up to 28 percent of people who bought a Fitbit product in 2015 stopped using it by the end of the year, according to the company. With the current procedure, sooner or later there will come a time when the influx of new users will be significantly reduced and will not be compensated by additional purchases of existing users.
The company's CEO, James Park, says that gradually expanding the functionality of wearable devices is a better strategy from the user's perspective than introducing new categories of devices that can do "a little bit of everything." According to him, the Apple Watch is "a computing platform, which is the wrong initial approach to this category."
Park further commented on the strategy of gradually introducing users to new wearable technology capabilities, saying, “We're going to be very careful with the gradual addition of these things. I think one of the main problems with smartwatches is that people still don't know what they're good for."
Woody Scal, Fitbit's chief commercial officer, said that in the long term, the company wants to focus on developing digital monitoring platforms to detect and prevent health problems. In this regard, the current Fitbit products mainly have a sensor for measuring the heart rate and functions for monitoring the progress of sleep.
Energy company BP, for example, offers Fitbit wristbands to 23 of its employees. One of the reasons is to monitor their sleep and evaluate whether they sleep soundly and are sufficiently rested before starting work. "As far as I know, we've collected the most data on sleep patterns in history. We are able to compare them with normative data and identify deviations," said Scal.
It's quite simple. In an age where more and more phones are available, it's just a bomb to go out every now and then with an old Nokia and a watch. I do a lot of sports. About 2 months ago I was looking for a replacement for my old Polar heart rate monitor. I like technology, so I became interested in smart watches. I ended up going with the Polar V800. It's not typically a smart watch, but it accepts notifications just fine. So read the mail or message from Viber and if it's nonsense, you don't have to reach for the phone. I rejected the smart watch because it only lasts 2 days at most. Write only one. That's totally bullshit. Take off and charge every day. Especially if you have it as an all-day activity and sleep monitor. The V800 lasts me about 10 days when I don't use GPS. Heart rate measurement is fine. It doesn't take much. If the watch lasts at least a week, I will buy it. I got used to those notifications very quickly. Sure, you must be within bluetooth range. If the watch is completely autonomous with a sim card and lasts a week, I will buy it. Pulling a mobile phone on a treadmill or bike is a hassle. Now I only go with a watch and an old Nokia 220 in my pocket in case I need to call for help. Placacka Note 3 can be at home.
Yes, let's all throw away our smartphones and buy stupid phones and single-purpose devices. Long live progress!!!
You are a fool. I didn't say that people should throw away their smartphones. Simply, every device is suitable for something. If you don't mind dragging everywhere you need an iP6+, then that means only one thing. You probably don't do sports outside. Otherwise, the people who threw away their smartphones and went back to being stupid are pretty good. Everyone generally agrees that they gained from the change. Autonomous watches with a SIM card and an OS are certainly not single-purpose devices. It's practically a phone in your hand. And if for you, progress is that degenerate people spend many hours staring at their mobile phones and sharing embarrassing statuses on a notebook, then we all imagine progress a little differently.
Did you do market research for your claim: "Otherwise, people who threw away their smartphones and went back to being idiots are pretty good", that you generalize like this from the table and label those who disagree with you as idiots? Your vision of the world is fascinating :/
I think that the gentleman only reacted to the fact that what John wrote may seem to have a contemptuous tone, that's why he reacted the way he did.
He probably didn't do market research, but we all have our own neighborhood and we might not run out of certain things in that neighborhood, so I take his statement to mean that a lot of people in his neighborhood have thrown away their smartphones and bought a brick and just "grunt", anyway the generalization is so unfortunate…
Fitbit Surge lasts 6-7 days on a charge with a sleep and heart rate monitor using an optical sensor, charges in 2 hours. The only thing that bothers me is that it does not handle notifications (only sms/calls), I would really like to be notified of appointments in the calendar.
Fitbit Blaze, already looks 100% better than Surge, can handle calendar, can't handle viber and other notifications (at least that's how I understand it), has a color display, so it only lasts 5 days with a heart rate monitor using an optical sensor and tracks sleep and other crap, it just doesn't have a GPS chip.
No, I don't want to advertise Fitbit, I'm just reacting to the fact that "smartwatches last 2 days at most", although we could argue about what a smartwatch is.
I just want to ask, you write about heart rate measurement with the Polar V800, if I'm not mistaken, then it's over the chest belt and therefore it doesn't matter mainly because of the use of BT, or I don't understand this wording: "Heart rate measurement is cool. It doesn't take much.", whether it's for the V800 or for smartwatches as a whole.
Yes. Heart rate is measured using the chest belt. Otherwise, it doesn't even make sense to measure it. Especially in sports. With the fact that it does not take anything away, it was meant that measuring the mic's heart rate does not reduce endurance. I guess I'll just use the chest strap. If you use GPS, the watch will last 13 hours according to the manual. But the V800 is primarily a sports watch. Connect different BT sensors from the bike to it. Sensing speed, distance, cadence, etc. Notifications are very addictive. At work, I keep my phone in my bag and on my watch I check who is calling, who is sending e-mail, etc. Then I react according to the importance. There is a lot of potential in smart watches. But it will take a while.
I have a fitbit and I'm satisfied, I admit that I'm a recreational athlete, so I don't need anything sophisticated and the chest strap is unnecessary for me (in general, I would use it, but somehow I don't like another thing I have to think about). The optical sensor is enough for me.
A colleague has a V800 and they are great too. I was just surprised that it looked like they had an optical sensor, which I didn't remember.
It's true that you don't connect sensors to the Fitbit (when I was looking, I thought you did, but now I checked and it doesn't work). At the time I was dealing with it I just wanted something to help me bridge the time until the AppleWatch was usable, so I liked the price/performance ratio. At the V800 price level, at that time I was looking more for a watch from Suunto, where, mainly due to mountain tourism, I liked the durability of the watch with GPS turned on, as well as the waterproofness. With the fitbit surge, they said it would be waterproof before release, and then about a month after launch they changed it directly on the manufacturer's website to waterproof...