Apple to Cease Selling Fitbit Activity Tracking Devices in Stores

[Solomani]

if Watch is just the beginning of Apple getting into wearables and if Apple gets into first party HomeKit hardware (there were rumors to that effect) I can see Apple stores selling fewer and fewer third party devices (outside of iPad and iPhone cases).

You are right. Apple Retail Store shelf space is limited in most of the stores. In the future, they need to be smarter about allowing "retail access" to 3rd-party accessories. They will eventually run out of space in trying to showcase all those products.

One idea I have, is that they could install a few "shopping kiosks". Like they can have a limited selection of say OtterBox (and other brands) iPhone cases on display. And next to the physical products, there is a small kiosk. You simply browse the exact type of Otterbox case you want, the exact color, and then order it right there. The Apple Pay terminals would give this a dose of secure transaction, since no one in the Retail Store will ever see your credit card info or your debit card passwords, etc.

 

[urkel]

Why on earth does Fitbit not want to support HealthKit? Obviously there's some overlap between the functions of the Fitbit and the Apple Watch, but they're hardly direct competitors. Seems like a dumb move.

Fitbit was one of the first mentions apple made when announcing HealthKit. We don't know what happened behind the scenes but Health data is incredibly valuable and it's very possible that they tried to use their popularity as leverage in order to strike a deal. This happens in the health industry a lot so with Apple now joining into a new industry then it's possible something went down and both sides are trying to secure their footing.

Consider it in terms of Fitbit vs HealthKit:

Portability: Fitbit (6+ + armband = Yeah Right)
Cost: Fitbit (Applewatch and iPhone are expensive)
Compatibility: Fitbit (iOS, android, Win, OSX, Web)

Keep in mind that, as Apple enthusiasts, we may be quick to choose Apple. But in terms of practicality and product then Fitbit still has an leg up over Apple and as a company then their long term goals may not be to be an Apple only product.

 

[spazzcat]

Fitbit was one of the first mentions apple made when announcing HealthKit. We don't know what happened behind the scenes but Health data is incredibly valuable and it's very possible that they tried to use their popularity as leverage in order to strike a deal. This happens in the health industry a lot so with Apple now joining into a new industry then it's possible something went down and both sides are trying to secure their footing.

Consider it in terms of Fitbit vs HealthKit:

Portability: Fitbit (6+ + armband = Yeah Right)
Cost: Fitbit (Applewatch and iPhone are expensive)
Compatibility: Fitbit (iOS, android, Win, OSX, Web)

Keep in mind that, as Apple enthusiasts, we may be quick to choose Apple. But in terms of practicality and product then Fitbit still has an leg up over Apple and as a company then their long term goals may not be to be an Apple only product.

How many more iPhone users have fitness trackers then the other phones users?

 

[Solomani]

How many more iPhone users have fitness trackers then the other phones users?

Most likely the iOS/iPhone camp has a much higher percentage of people using fitness trackers than Androids, in terms of percentage of users. For example, like "12% of iOS users use fitness trackers, as opposed to only 7% of Android users."

Remember that one of the earliest and popular fitness trackers was from Nike (Nike+ and Nike Fuelband). And Nike had limited itself to iOS for the longest time. They purposely ignored Android for the longest time. That may still be the case? It started with Nike and iPod integration for yeeeeeears. THAT was the first well-known incarnation of a fitness tracker.

 

[turtlebud]

I would love a waterproof tracker for swimming.
I had hopes for Watch but until it is waterproof, I will pass.

I feel exactly the same way.

My friend told me about an interesting development with the pebble - that it will soon have a swim app released on it that enables swim tracking.

http://www.swim.com/pebble

The pebble is waterproof up to 5 ATM (I think that's 50M) and had a price drop to $99 recently. Up til now, I used the misfit shine to track my activity. It tracks sleep & is waterproof so it can kind of track swimming (it tracks that you were active and you can tag that activity as swimming).

I thought that for the same price as the shine, the pebble was worth a shot. I've had it for 2 weeks so far and think it works pretty well. Though I haven't been able to use the swim.com app yet (because the uploader has not been approved by the apple store yet) I have swam with it with no problems. In addition, I like being able to tell time on my wrist again (vs. the shine) and while not the prettiest, I get notification through the pebble as well. Ironically, misfit has a pebble app which tracks your steps & sleep on the pebble so once they get the sync issues fixed I may be able to give my shine to my wife.

Among the other nice things with the pebble are the 3-4 day battery life, alarms (buzzes on wrist), and the e-ink type display (you can see it very easily in sunlight). My hope is that this will at least tie me over until apple improve the battery life & waterproofs the apple watch.

 

[edogyip]

I just want all my data in one place. If Fitbit isn't going to comply, I'm just going to vote with my wallet. It doesn't matter to me whether or not the tracker continues to work. I do hope they change their mind, and I'm all for consumer pressure on a company to make changes to my liking. As far as I'm concerned, they have until the watch comes out to change my mind.

 

[Rigby]

Fitbit was demoed on stage by Apple when they announced Healthkit, so they were on board back in June. They apparently dropped the plans, no reason Apple should continue to support them over someone else who does support Healthkit.

Not sure what you are talking about. I was as WWDC when Healthkit was announced. There was no demo and no mention at all of Fitbit supporting it.

 

[marktronics]

I wonder how much of a hit/impact this even makes to Fitbit's bottom line. How many people buy fitness devices at the Apple store. I am sure some. I just question the volume.

I would think Amazon, Best Buy and other places are far more important as a sales vehicle for Fitbit.

I think the biggest hit to Fitbit will be the release of the Apple Watch. Obviously the watch is going to be more expensive than a Fibit ($100 for the Flex), but it will also be more fully featured.

 

[JeffDM]

I haven't seen confirmation of the action against Bose, however plausible it may be.

Fitbit being pulled for not being willing to support Apple's framework, OK, I guess. But still, being pulled appears to be a rumor, not yet known to be fact.

 

[UnseenLlama]

Not sure what you are talking about. I was as WWDC when Healthkit was announced. There was no demo and no mention at all of Fitbit supporting it.

No, there wasn't a specific demo, but Apple did show the FitBit and companion app right before presenting HealthKit.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/2/5772074/apple-healthkit-ios-8-announcement

 

[Rigby]

Fitbit was one of the first mentions apple made when announcing HealthKit.

Not true. I remember Federighi showing several health gadgets including a Fitbit has examples for existing health applications on iOS, but to my recollection it was never mentioned that they would support Healthkit.

 

[bozzykid]

Bose working with NFL to fine players to that wear Beats, Fitbit isn't supporting something Apple is investing in...

Again another excuse. Apple is just trying to profit in their own accessories market. We will probably see even more accessories removed from the Apple Store in the coming months. But of course people will try to justify it by blaming the accessory maker.

 

[Rigby]

No, there wasn't a specific demo, but Apple did show the FitBit and companion app right before presenting HealthKit.

Yeah well, that's not Fitbit's fault, is it? Again, there was no mention that they would support Healthkit.

 

[opfreak]

isheep are great:

I will only use a product if Tim Cook approves.

 

[samcraig]

Yeah well, that's not Fitbit's fault, is it? Again, there was no mention that they would support Healthkit.

In fact, it could have been Apple trying to "nudge" fitbit into compliance. What better way to get them on board then to have all of their users asking why they don't support healthkit. This thread is proof of that

 

[UnseenLlama]

Yeah well, that's not Fitbit's fault, is it? Again, there was no mention that they would support Healthkit.

I never stated that there was mention of integration into HealthKit. But this slide is probably what is causing everyone to think that FitBit integration was a done deal.

 

[name99]

I wonder how much of a hit/impact this even makes to Fitbit's bottom line. How many people buy fitness devices at the Apple store. I am sure some. I just question the volume.

I would think Amazon, Best Buy and other places are far more important as a sales vehicle for Fitbit.

Even if I don't buy stuff at the Apple store, I browse there (especially in new categories that are still a hell of a mess, like Home, Health, and IoT) to try to winnow down choices, on the assumption that what Apple displays is the stuff that works best with their ecosystem.
It's like a company that loses the support of the high-end nerds. They may make up only .1% of the buying population, but they're writing the internet reviews and advising their friends...

----------

Again another excuse. Apple is just trying to profit in their own accessories market. We will probably see even more accessories removed from the Apple Store in the coming months. But of course people will try to justify it by blaming the accessory maker.

This is just utterly ignorant. Standards, broadly defined, are what MAKE markets.

Home automation has been around for years --- and it has made NO-ONE much money because it's a godawful cluster**** of fifty incompatible "standards". No normal person has time to wade through all that crap to try to find a collection of items that will actually all work together. Apple laying down the law and very obviously supporting some products and not others tames that situation and expands the market (for EVERYONE who isn't a deluded fool) by 100x.

Health is in much the same position. Right now it's this tiny market for the same sort of reasons. Very few people are buying Smart Scales, or Smart Heart Rate Monitors or Smart Blood Pressure Cuffs, not primarily because of the cost but because of the interop issues. Forcing a single standard is what changes this dynamic.

Anyone opposed to this is like someone who imagines that WiFi would have taken off if we had ten simultaneous different standards, and every piece of equipment, whether phone, tablet, laptop, security camera, TV, randomly chose which of the specs to use. But that is EXACTLY the situation we have today in Home and Health.

 

[cocky jeremy]

I'm still more likely to buy a Fitbit Charge than an Apple Watch.

 

[Rigby]

Health is in much the same position. Right now it's this tiny market for the same sort of reasons. Very few people are buying Smart Scales, or Smart Heart Rate Monitors or Smart Blood Pressure Cuffs, not primarily because of the cost but because of the interop issues. Forcing a single standard is what changes this dynamic.

Anyone opposed to this is like someone who imagines that WiFi would have taken off if we had ten simultaneous different standards, and every piece of equipment, whether phone, tablet, laptop, security camera, TV, randomly chose which of the specs to use. But that is EXACTLY the situation we have today in Home and Health.

The problem with that comparison is that Homekit and Healthkit are not industry standards, but proprietary Apple technologies that, as far as we know at this point, will never work on anything but Apple devices.

 

[glenthompson]

I have a FitBit and my wife was looking for a bracelet type. We opted to get the Jawbone Up instead of the FitBit model for a number of reasons, one of them being the lack of integration with Apple's HealthKit.

 

[name99]

Pebble

I feel exactly the same way.

My friend told me about an interesting development with the pebble - that it will soon have a swim app released on it that enables swim tracking.

http://www.swim.com/pebble

The pebble is waterproof up to 5 ATM (I think that's 50M) and had a price drop to $99 recently. Up til now, I used the misfit shine to track my activity. It tracks sleep & is waterproof so it can kind of track swimming (it tracks that you were active and you can tag that activity as swimming).

I thought that for the same price as the shine, the pebble was worth a shot. I've had it for 2 weeks so far and think it works pretty well. Though I haven't been able to use the swim.com app yet (because the uploader has not been approved by the apple store yet) I have swam with it with no problems. In addition, I like being able to tell time on my wrist again (vs. the shine) and while not the prettiest, I get notification through the pebble as well. Ironically, misfit has a pebble app which tracks your steps & sleep on the pebble so once they get the sync issues fixed I may be able to give my shine to my wife.

Among the other nice things with the pebble are the 3-4 day battery life, alarms (buzzes on wrist), and the e-ink type display (you can see it very easily in sunlight). My hope is that this will at least tie me over until apple improve the battery life & waterproofs the apple watch.

I'd agree that Pebble is well worth looking at for people waiting six months for an Apple watch. It feels like an Apple product in that it's aesthetically attractive (kindof MacOS 1 meets iOS 1) and does what it does well, with a mostly (not perfectly) coherent UI.

It's not perfect.
- The Pebble iOS app is crazy slow (seriously, it's the slowest iOS app I've ever used) but fortunately you don't need it much after initial setup and you've installed a few apps.
- The developers (for the most part) appear to be 14yr-old amateurs learning programming and thrilled at this new toy they've discovered. They have no aesthetic sense (and the lack of chrome and standardized UI primitives means the dev system does not impose an aesthetic on them).
- A consequence of the above is that NO-ONE is solving the most important problem a watch needs to solve. There are a billion faces in the Pebble Store,but the reason for that is that 80% of them are putting together whatever combination of "analog vs digital face"X"date format desired"X"weather format desired"X"battery indicator(s) desired"X"ticker of some sort [stock, new, sports]"X etc etc etc. It's a crazy combinatorial explosion that just sucks for everyone. The solution is clearly some sort of user-level "Build your own watch-face" UI (something like Dashboard on OSX) but Pebble doesn't offer this, and the few faces that offer customization have TRULY TERRIBLE UI (like I said, amateur developers) and the results (at least the one's I tried) just don't work (at least the one I tried, which never displayed weather properly).

To me the single most obvious thing Pebble teaches us is that the thing a watch will be doing 99% of the time is showing a face that the user glances at. You can't satisfy everyone with one face, or just a few faces, so trying to do that is futile. You NEED to have a face builder app to allow people to extract value from their watch --- if you don't provide this, the alternative will be a mess of thousands of faces in your watch store, with no discoverability as to the one any user actually wants, and a godawful mess.

I fear for Apple on this front. None of the Android watches (as far as I know) has a face builder app, but they are agile and will get their eventually, as may Pebble.
Apple, on the other hand, seem so determined to go down the "watch as a piece of jewelry that looks like it did in 1800" route that I suspect they will only get this right after three successive years of sub-exciting aWatch sales. Certainly the fact that they're not waterproof in release one strikes me as suggesting a very dangerous set of priorities. It's fine to appeal to rich fashionistas as long as you ALSO appeal to the developers and geeks that will make your device truly beloved...

 

[nixiemaiden]

Why on earth does Fitbit not want to support HealthKit? Obviously there's some overlap between the functions of the Fitbit and the Apple Watch, but they're hardly direct competitors. Seems like a dumb move.

Seriously? They aren't on board because they want people to use and pay for their premium services.

Personally, I love FitBit. I have been using my Flex for over a year now and it still works flawlessly. I have had no problems with the software on iOS. No problems with the web site. And it is pretty accurate. I only take it off to charge it once a week.

I have a ton of friends and family that use FitBit and it is fun to compare steps and now they have these beta competitions which are also a lot of fun.

Regardless of what Apple decides to do, I am most likely going to stick with FitBit products.

 

[jicon]

Isn't this how you get Fitbit data in to Health app?

MyFitnessTracker app tracks weight, etc in to the Health app, and Fitbit connects to that app to share data... ergo... can't you count steps/calories/floors in to the Health app that way?

My wife has a One... just waiting for the day that Fitbit does a good wristband version, which looks like the Charge or Charge HR will do just fine.

Edit: Link https://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/30

 

[urkel]

How many more iPhone users have fitness trackers then the other phones users?

I fully understand your point and I'm not trying to argue but...
How many iPhone users have the HealthKit capable chip (5S, 6, 6+). And of those then how many diligently track health data? And of those then how many carry their phone during a workout?

Again, not arguing here. Just playing devils advocate for why a company wouldn't want to be dictated by Apple on how to run their future. As someone who's been using a Fitbit for years but does nothing with the data (I've been the same weight/build since college) then Ive been using FitBits more out of habit than necessity. But I know a lot of people much more serious about fitness than me and they aren't planning on strapping an iPhone to their foreheads or drop $350 for a wrist enabled tracker. And considering the Fitbit gear is pretty good then to those people then switching just for brand loyalty may not make sense.

 

[name99]

The problem with that comparison is that Homekit and Healthkit are not industry standards, but proprietary Apple technologies that, as far as we know at this point, will never work on anything but Apple devices.

The world is full of "proprietary" standards. Code your game to DirectX? Proprietary. Write using C#? Proprietary (good enough). Use Android APIs? Proprietary.

Yes, in some magical perfect world there would be an open standard in these areas (Home, Health, Auto). We aren't there yet, so you move forward by adopting the best spec available even if it isn't perfect. What will happen over time is what always happens --- bits of the functional spec (whether proprietary or not) will be matched by others and we'll converge to a single more or less working solution.
At the very least, for example, by fixing on TWO (already standard everywhere else) wireless solutions --- BT LE for low power, WiFi for bandwidth --- and forgetting all these crazy other connectivity specs like Zigbee and Z-Wave and Insteon and X10 --- we'll have made substantial progress.