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Pebble Announces New 'Pebble Time Round' Smart Watch

I have a Martian Notifier I picked up on sale for $50 (replaced plastic band with 3rd party leather). Vibrates when I get a text, call or email and I can look to see who it is. Perfect for what I needed.

Minimal functionality relative to an iWatch, but I think defines the acceptable next tier for the 'smartwatch' - $99 or less. Anything more and your customers will spend a few extra $$ and buy an iWatch.
 
Dagless said:
No.
Water resistance, longer battery life, more physical buttons, always-on display is what Pebble has over the Apple Watch. I find the Pebble to be a much better time keeping device due to those points. But I found the Apple Watch to be great in other ways (like messaging from the device, taking calls, more apps).

2 day charging isn't so bad. I charge my devices every night but in case I forget to do so it's nice to know I can still get another day out of the new Pebble.
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And it also doesn't do too much. And you don't have to remember too much about what each app does and force touch. Also, the problem with Apple watch is many apps are on the iPhone, so sluggish.
 
cjc2104 said:
Good point. In the tech industry you never what patents they have under the hood... it only takes 1...
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Well, it would be relatively straightforward to look up the patents that Pebble has registered. They might have a few, but considering the fact (as far as we know) that they haven't yet sued anyone for infringing on their patents, I would assume that Samsung, Apple, LG and Motorola have found ways to invent around the few patents that they might have filed.
 
peterdevries said:
For that statement by him to hold any weight I would like to know how many of each model has been bought and what the revenue trend is. I know this is not statistically relevant but I see the original Pebble quite a lot, while I still have to encounter one of the new models. A lot of that million is likely to be that first model.

So, I'm quite sceptic whether Pebble actually can demonstrate an increase in sales, even though the market for smartwatches is increasing in size.

Nevertheless, 1 million of sold watches is not anything to ignore, but I wonder if there is anything in that watch in terms of technology, design or business model that Apple (or any of the others for that matter) considers worthy of investigation.
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I don't think Apple or Google need to copy anything from Pebbles hardware or software. Apples going after the very high end market and they're killing it. It's just nice to have options, the pebble is competition because it's a smart watch. There are still traditional watches on sale too and those are also competing for a place on people's wrists.

And yeah obviously when he said a million he was talking total over all their product lines to date. That's still a huge number and honestly this new Pebble is the best yet and it looks way better than the older models, it has the highest appeal of any Pebble to date and that's a big deal.

Me personally I'll still probably buy an Apple Watch 2 and I prefer the way it looks to this new Pebble but I wouldn't discount the Pebble it's obviously here to stay and they keep raising millions at kickstarter to hedge their bets.
 
Earz6280 said:
4k on the iPhone 6s Plus is amazing!
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Thanks - what's the bandwidth required to play this back - I have insane pipe at work and it stutters badly

upload_2015-9-23_16-11-8.png
 
LuckyBubba said:
The more I wear my Apple Watch, the better I understand it's rectangular shape. Sure, it' reads easier, but the design enhances the shape of our arms. The wrist is round, but the arm is long (rectangular) and flat which is why a rectangular watch looks much nicer on someone who wears short sleeve shirts - sure, the round is nice and it's a personal choice in the end, but the rectangular matches our body shape. Pebble looks like a toy and there is nothing professional or flattering about it. Usefulness; perhaps so.. Style and usefulness is why apple is selling so many watches.
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You really went in depth analyzing Apple's thinking. Ignoramus that I am, I'd just put the thing on and look at it as needed.
But then, I am not convinced I want this swatch at this point. It's not doing enough and knowing Apple by gen 3 or 4 it's really what it should have been to begin with.

Thank you for beta testing though🙂
 
I am still not persuaded on the NEED for a smartwatch. It is not that great at telling time, since it's not always on, the heart rate monitor is not that accurate if you are seriously into sports and the hassle of just charging another device everyday just makes it unattractive and pretty useless to me. i find my needs served much better with an iPod nano with Nike+ and a HRM. For everything else my iPhone 5 serves me just fine. (Remember how they used to tell us how perfect its size is for one-handed use?)
 
Quu said:
I don't think Apple or Google need to copy anything from Pebbles hardware or software. Apples going after the very high end market and they're killing it. It's just nice to have options, the pebble is competition because it's a smart watch. There are still traditional watches on sale too and those are also competing for a place on people's wrists.

And yeah obviously when he said a million he was talking total over all their product lines to date. That's still a huge number and honestly this new Pebble is the best yet and it looks way better than the older models, it has the highest appeal of any Pebble to date and that's a big deal.

Me personally I'll still probably buy an Apple Watch 2 and I prefer the way it looks to this new Pebble but I wouldn't discount the Pebble it's obviously here to stay and they keep raising millions at kickstarter to hedge their bets.
Click to expand...

I see your point. The thing that we are discussing around is who the target market would be and if there is an overlap between Apple and Pebble. Apple is not only going for the very high end market,. Their watch is not that much more expensive than the Pebble. If you compare the functionality of the two the Apple watch provides much more (with only battery life being inferior) than the Pebble.

Sure Pebble is a competitor. Especially if you consider the entire watch market and consider that no-one will wear two watches at the same time. However, if you consider the smartwatch segment in which both compete, that market has become more crowded with Apple coming in and a number of others launching very good watches by themselves.

So, let's look at what consumers find important in a smartwatch (aggregated from opinions here and elsewhere):
  • battery life
  • design
  • size
  • app availability
  • independence from smartphone
  • screen quality
  • screen usage
  • waterproofing
  • there might be more.....
I might have missed some out. But there are not that many of the above where Pebble is leading in (actually only battery life but at the expense of screen quality and usage).

So, if I as a consumer would be faced with the above list of criteria and would need to select the best option, then Pebble would stand little chance of coming out on top, whereas the others would all be more or less equal (Android vs iOS basically).

Will Pebble always be there? Possible. There might be customers that like the e-ink screen or the design and are wiling to pay for it. But Pebble needs to make sure that it has a feature or aspect in its product that the others cannot or will not copy. In the current situation, that means that Pebble would be married to the e-ink screen. I fail to see how that will be of much use, as battery technology is improving and the other manufacturers such as Samsung and Apple will increase their tech in that area (both through software and hardware means) to pull aside Pebble.

If at any point Samsung or Apple will match any of the functions that Pebble has (i.e. battery life at a similar price), then Pebble is dead in the water. I fear that Pebble does not have the marketing resources to counteract that power.

In addition, I'm not sure whether Pebble is still killing it on the kickstarter front. That was almost a year ago. Any self respecting VC or investor would leak twice before putting money in this company. That is going to be a serious problem in the future as it requires a large amount of capital to produce smart watches and retail them globally. They cannot afford to become a too small niche player or they will not be able to cover their costs. So, I see them disappearing in the not too distant future. Not wishing this on anyone, but I think this is what will happen if they do not change direction in a major way.
 
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I'd pay $129 max for this. The Apple Watch is intriguing but way overpriced. Pebble can succeed by offering more bang for your buck.
 
dacreativeguy said:
Wasn't battery life Pebble's entire justification over the Apple Watch? This company is a joke.
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Yes, years before it was announced Pebble decided they would justify their existence by having better battery life than the non-existent Apple Watch. Bravo.



Mike
 
I don't get it. Pebble just launched two new watches this year. Why are they not putting these dollars into marketing and enhancing the Time and Time Steel instead of pushing out this half baked thing? This seems like a bad management decision.

I had an original Pebble and now have a Pebble Time. I like them. They are unique and I think the features are just right for what people would want access to on their wrist. The display technology is a differentiator and they should be finding ways to accentuate and market it. When it comes right down to it, who actually cares that it is 64 color? For someone that wants a good decent smart watch with good battery life that you can see in the sun, no one.

If they should be doing anything, it should be R&D to get the price down. Get the Pebble Time down to ~$99. Find the angle that sells it as the smart watch for those that don't want to drop $500 on one, and market the hell out of it. Then they could have kept working on the round watch for another year and released something impactful.
 
Dagless said:
No.
Water resistance, longer battery life, more physical buttons, always-on display is what Pebble has over the Apple Watch. I find the Pebble to be a much better time keeping device due to those points. But I found the Apple Watch to be great in other ways (like messaging from the device, taking calls, more apps).

2 day charging isn't so bad. I charge my devices every night but in case I forget to do so it's nice to know I can still get another day out of the new Pebble.
Click to expand...

I swim with my Apple Watch every morning and have done so since June. So you can scratch that off your list.
 
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