Fitbit is starting off the new year just like it ended the old one: buying out its competition. The fitness tracking giant just made a deal that will add another company's portfolio to its growing stable of smartwatch assets.
Vector Watch, the Romanian smartwatch maker known for slick-looking devices with month-long battery lives, on Tuesday announced its purchase by Fitbit in a deal that sounds similar to the agreement that brought Pebble into the fold. Like the Pebble purchase, the terms of the deal weren't disclosed to the public.
In buying Pebble, Fitbit focused on acquiring the software and firmware of the smaller company's smartwatch offerings, specifically excluding the company's hardware from the purchase. From the language used to describe the Vector deal, it looks like the same type of acquisition is happening here:
Today, we are happy to announce that the Vector Watch team and our software platform are joining Fitbit, the leader in the connected health and fitness market! We believe this is an important milestone as a moment when we will start building other new and amazing products, features and experiences, incorporating our unique technology and knowhow with Fitbit’s experience and global community.
The software platform will live on at Fitbit, but the Vector brand will die off, as the team announced that there will be no new software or hardware updates going forward. Without an active developer community like Pebble, Vector's watches in the wild will simply continue to run on their current system until they become obsolete.
For Fitbit, this move is business as usual — but it could point to something more. Even with the smartwatch market in flux, the Vector purchase is another sign pointing to an honest-to-goodness everyday lifestyle smartwatch in the works from Fitbit.
By adding the assets of another smartwatch maker to its wearable team, the company could expand beyond its fitness-centric product base. Vector's devices were decidedly fashion-forward with style as their selling point. It's not a stretch to imagine a future Fitbit device for users looking for more of a luxurious aesthetic in their fitness tracker.
Even more convincing is the news from CES that Fitbit will be launching its very own app store in 2017. While there was no concrete announcement made, Fitbit CEO James Park told The Verge that the company plans on making the project, which would be completed with infrastructure built with Pebble assets, "as soon as possible."
Topics Fitbit Smartwatches
