Fitbit Buys Software Assets From Smartwatch Startup Pebble

Bloomberg:

Fitbit Inc., the fitness band maker, has acquired software assets from struggling smartwatch startup Pebble Technology Corp., a move that will help it better compete with Apple Inc.

The purchase excludes Pebble’s hardware, Fitbit said in a statement Wednesday. The deal is mainly about hiring the startup’s software engineers and testers, and getting intellectual property such as the Pebble watch’s operating system, watch apps, and cloud services, people familiar with the matter said earlier.

The Pebble fire sale is the result of financial struggles in a smartwatch market that failed to grow as quickly or as large as initially hoped and hyped. Industry shipments slumped 52 percent in the third quarter, according to research firm IDC, and Pebble cut a quarter of its staff earlier this year.

This has been predicted for a long time so it comes as no real surprise. The market is dominated by Fitbit and Apple and, while it was a darling of the Kickstarter and early adopter tech crowd, the Pebble never really had much mainstream success.