Fitbit has several models with other functions. I'm sure the whole band thing will be surpassed by watches of one form or another with time (for those that want to wear anything at all), but Fitbits not too poorly positioned to have success in that space if they release the right products.
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Jawbone Ceases Production of Fitness Trackers, Seeks Buyer for Speaker Business
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Updated article; Jawbone exiting consumer products, focusing on clinical grade wearables, getting 165 million funding. Selling off inventory, and speaker technologies along with some patents. Interesting twist if true.
I have an Apple Watch, no interest in owning a fitbit, and two eyes. Keep count, if you look around a city you’ll see 10x the number of fitbits vs Apple Watches, Misfit Shines, Nike FuelBands, Garmin Vivofits and Jawbone Ups combined. They’ve absolutely won this and it’s impressive.
I have the bluetooth ear piece to use with my phone when driving. Bought it 4 years ago for $100, no bad still holds 4 hours of talk time.
Not a fan of their other stuff.
Not a fan of their other stuff.
This is not because of Apple. This is because of poor design. I love my Jawbone Fitness trackers but they have technical flaws. Still I will never switch for an Apple Watch for several reasons:
-Size. I wear my Jawbone UP at night to track my sleep. Apple Watch is too big to wear at night.
-Vibrating alarm. My Jawbone wakes me up gently by vibrating. Apple Watch can't do this.
-Battery Life. The Jawbone UP has a 10 day battery life. Will never settle for less.
-I just Prefer real watches. I can wear my UP together with my real watches.
But hey I am on my 5th Jawbone band now. The first Jawbone UP bough for 180 € died after 2 months. The second after 4 months. After that the Apple store stopped selling them so I got a full refund. Bought the next one on Amazon for 140 € and it died after 5 months. Got a full refund since they didn't started shipping UP24 only so I bought one for 100 €. It died after 6 months. Got a new one now again for free. So for 5 bands I spent 100 € in total. No wonder they are going out of business.
-Size. I wear my Jawbone UP at night to track my sleep. Apple Watch is too big to wear at night.
-Vibrating alarm. My Jawbone wakes me up gently by vibrating. Apple Watch can't do this.
-Battery Life. The Jawbone UP has a 10 day battery life. Will never settle for less.
-I just Prefer real watches. I can wear my UP together with my real watches.
But hey I am on my 5th Jawbone band now. The first Jawbone UP bough for 180 € died after 2 months. The second after 4 months. After that the Apple store stopped selling them so I got a full refund. Bought the next one on Amazon for 140 € and it died after 5 months. Got a full refund since they didn't started shipping UP24 only so I bought one for 100 €. It died after 6 months. Got a new one now again for free. So for 5 bands I spent 100 € in total. No wonder they are going out of business.
Gotta disagree, the Jambox was designed with the attention to detail and packaging that makes Apple so revered. And they owned both that and the Bluetooth headset market at one time. Probably a very interesting B school study one day.
I love mine too. I travel with mine as well but I mostly use it with my Macbook Pro.
I paid a small fortune for the original jambox and they were notorious for a defect with the 3.5mm socket making it so you had to have a 3.5mm plug wiggled halfway in in just the right way to get sound out of it even if you were connecting via bluetooth.
I got sick of it and bought the latest model jambox mini which had a resdesign to solve the problem and I absolutely love it.
So yes I agree their design is fantastic, but even with their jambox they've had hardware issues.
Poor battery life? iwatch? Do you actually own one? Advising one of the planets most successful companies to compete on price? Logic 101
Multi-function devices win in the end. All-around excellent smart watches (a well-priced blend of superior form and function with decent battery life) don't really exist yet but they will in a few generations. Dedicated fitness trackers will go the way of the iPod, point and shoot digital camera, and on-dash gps.
All of that said, Fitbit can survive if they work towards adding features to their fitness trackers such that they are eventually excellent smart watches instead of mere fitness trackers.
Can't say that I'm overly surprised. A fitness band that has no visual interface for the consumer to look at is a hard sell. Fitbit offers a small display but its informative enough to give the person feed back on their progress without needing to open up an app on the phone.
Not everyone wants to spend $300 on a smart watch. Some people are perfectly happy with a fitness tracker that costs a third of that.
I use my Apple Watch to wake me with its vibrating alarm.. Just doesn't have the smart wake feature.
Their first generation trackers were decent... but the newer ones are complete junk. That's the reason they're going out of business.
Why would you wanna put your money on the last chance project, that's worst than a cheesy Kickstarter. If they failed your wearable will be obsolete in a couple months. Their product is as bad the the one you can find on Amazon, actually those are way more cheaper and has more features.
The reality (outside of Silly Con Valley) is the world is getting fatter and more sedentary. While people may aspire to more active lifestyles, they apparently are choosing to spend money on food instead of fitness tracking devices. I had a conversation with a group of hipsters yesterday that revolved around "hard" root beers, and listened to their ramblings on how to make the best root beer floats. They were focused on cramming as many grams of sugar as possible into their alcoholic repast. None of them were wearing Jawbone Up (or a
watch). 
People have done sports for a long time. Some people may do sports for a while because it is cool but most will stick to it for other reasons. Sportwatches (and accessories like heart rate monitors, step counters, barometers, GPS, bicycle cadence sensors) have existed for decades (Polar was founded in 1977, Suunto in 1936).
You assume that most people that use fitness trackers only use them to track their everyday activity. I don't think that is the case. Doing sports in most cases has some competitive aspect (even if only competing with yourself). Some people using fitness trackers might never graduate from mere recording of activity to initiating activity, but for others activity tracking is the gateway drug into some sort of exercise and others still get it them to track the physical exercise they were already doing.
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There is a clear tendency for societies that get richer to get fatter and more sedentary along the way. But once a certain level is achieved that trend slows down and even reverses somewhat.
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I don't know if I believe this. I wear my not-even-there Fitbit Surge HR 24x7 but my comparatively-heavy Apple Watch only goes on my wrist when I walk out of the house.
Anyone else do the same as I do?
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Agree with this. Their first couple headsets were pretty amazing devices, but then they decided to branch out -- and that was a mistake.
Main annoyance for me is that this probably means the other sensors in the up3/4 will probably never be activated now. I'm quite happy with the steps/sleep/passiveHR monitoring, but the reason I went with Jawbone rather than fitbit was the promise of the extra capabilities of the sensors - galvanic skin response, perspiration, hydration etc. That and the fitbit is really ugly!
Dammit, I went from Misfit to Jawbone late last year and I'm only now getting data that's long-term enough to be useful. NOW where should I go that's not going to go out of business? Blah. I might HAVE to get the silly watch. I don't wear watches though. I loved the little round pill that I could slip in the small pocket of my jeans and be entirely invisible about my tracking. Sigh.