Andrea and I after wowing the Smithsonian. |
Google has just announced the acquisition of Fitbit for a cool $2.1 billion (USD). The move will undoubtedly drive change in the industry, though, not as much as one might think – at least initially. Don’t worry, I’ll explain in a moment. Like any acquisition, it needs to actually be approved by regulators, but that’s largely just a formality for this particular instance. Google & Fitbit expect that to occur in 2020, which is when the real work can begin.
It’s probably best to start off with where these two companies’ products fit in the market today. Fitbit, of course, being one of the biggest wearable players, though sliding in the last few years as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei (and to a lesser but still visible extent Garmin) have seen their sales increase significantly (keep in mind that global IDC tracking isn’t a great indicator of North America/European sales). Apple sells approximately 20-25 million Apple Watches per year (and more than double that for the entire ‘wearables’ category). Whereas Fitbit has been in the 13-20 million ballpark the last few years.
Google meanwhile hasn’t sold their own watch device. Instead, they have Wear OS (previously known as Android Wear). That’s an operating system that’s largely focused on the higher end smartwatch with a similar battery profile as the Apple Watch. Meaning, it’s designed to roughly last 1-2 days. Exactly how long it lasts depends heavily on the exact partner hardware. For example, Polar’s M600 (Wear OS) fitness-focused watch tends to last longer than some other companies’ thinner watches. And similarly, we saw Apple decrease actual battery life this year in the Series 5 from past years. Again – it all depends on the hardware under the covers.
Battery aside – Fitbit and Google do have wearables overlap, but it’s kinda messy overlap. For example, Fitbit’s top-end device – the Ionic (priced $200-$250 depending on tidal and moon phases) has music, GPS, and contactless payments. Wear OS devices in that category tended to start from the same price point and increase depending mostly on materials used. Fossil had countless watches all in that price range. However, Wear OS wasn’t situated well for the less expensive all-day activity trackers that made Fitbit popular.
The battery demands of Wear OS (like WatchOS from Apple) simply didn’t allow that. They are blow-torches in the battery department in comparison to the much longer-lasting Fitbit (and Garmin/Suunto/Polar/etc…) wearables. A large part of that is the screen – Wear OS devices tended to have far more vivid screens. And as we saw this year with Fitbit, Apple, and Garmin introducing always-on screens like Samsung has had – when enabled, it more than halves the battery life.
Next, if we look at the health side of things- while Google has their health platform, it doesn’t have anywhere near the depth of Fitbit from a social fitness tracking standpoint. Nobody really does. That’s why Fitbit has succeeded to date: Their platform is engaging. Even looking to Apple, for example, one can see the huge lack of social engagement between Apple Watch users. You can do basic competitions, but the methods and challenges that Fitbit has, exceeds everyone else’s capabilities.
So the real question here is: Which OS wins?
The easy answer is ‘Wear OS’, and to an extent, Google says that as well. Their SVP of Devices and Services, Rick Osterloh noted that this “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market.”
But the challenge with that broad-brush statement is somewhat twofold:
A) Wear OS isn’t viable for Fitbit’s non-smartwatch activity trackers
B) Wear OS is still a battery beast
Not to mention that Wear OS still has relatively little uptick in apps (just like Fitbit does). Sure, the app stores are full of apps, but very few that you’ll actually use beyond a cursory one or two time glance.
Realistically – Google and Fitbit are going to have to keep both platforms running, likely for many years. But that might not be all bad. Take the lower end wearables (the Inspire and Charge families), there’s no reason to even bother trying to port Wear OS onto these devices. Instead, Fitbit/Google will likely keep them on the platforms they’re on (the core Fitbit platform that was there prior to FitbitOS proper). They can add in things like Google Assistant down the road (they added Alexa to the Versa 2 this past summer) and since there’s no apps on these, much of the benefit of Wear OS is negligible or non-existent.
Meanwhile, you’ve got the Versa and Ionic lineup. These have strong overlap with Wear OS and are likely to be canned from an operating system standpoint. At first glance, you might assume that FitbitOS is newer than Wear OS (or Android Wear). But in reality, one has to remember that FitbitOS is essentially just a spin-off of the Pebble operating system (remember, Fitbit bought Pebble). In fact, some of those lead Pebble engineers are still there leading this platform. But, I can’t see any scenario where they keep FitbitOS. There’s simply no reason to.
All of the fitness and lifestyle type interfaces and functionality that run on a Versa or Ionic type watch can easily be ported over to run on Wear OS. Sure, there will be differences, but because Fitbit’s products are fairly modular and also less deep in individual functions than say something like a Garmin watch, it’ll be easier to stock replace pieces like the music player or even basic run tracking. Wear OS does those just fine today – and not appreciably different than Fitbit.
So in short – I’d argue FitbitOS goes away, Wear OS continues, and basic Fitbit trackers stay the course on their proprietary platform as they have for more than a decade.
And this is where things get a bit messy. See, they say almost nothing about existing Fitbit users in their press release except this single line item:
“Consumer trust is paramount to Fitbit. Strong privacy and security guidelines have been part of Fitbit’s DNA since day one, and this will not change. Fitbit will continue to put users in control of their data and will remain transparent about the data it collects and why. The company never sells personal information, and Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads.”
At first you might think – great, that means all is well, right?
Not so fast. What’s missing in this entire press release is any commitment whatsoever to maintaining the Fitbit platform or ecosystem. Bizarre as that omission might seem (since that’s what Fitbit is so well known for), it means Google is keeping all options on the table – including burning down that ecosystem to fold into other projects (which historically the company tends to do for acquisitions, they’ve acquired at last 229 companies as of today).
In fact, when I asked Fitbit’s PR team about any commitment (at all) to existing Fitbit users – they said:
“The release and blog post are the comments for now.”
In other words – ‘no comment’.
That could be taken both ways. But I know better. We all know better.
When it comes to acquisitions, if a company plans to keep something – they say it (and usually say it loudly and proudly – like they did above with the security/privacy bits). If a company has even the slightest thought of not keeping it, they say nothing. And if the company plans to burn it down, they definitely say nothing.
This is a pretty big deal for neither Fitbit or Google’s statements to address.
They do however offer one other line item around compatibility, which is:
“Fitbit will continue to remain platform-agnostic across both Android and iOS.”
And that makes sense. After all, Wear OS works today on iOS and Android devices, and there’s no reason to shift away from that. Most companies in this segment find that they have 60-70% iOS market share for consumers of these types of devices (as compared to far higher global Android market share). Thus, ditching iOS support would be a self-inflicted wound.
Interestingly, Garmin was asked this very question on their earnings call this week by Robert Spingarn of Credit Suisse. CEO Cliff Pemble said the following:
“So we’ve seen the speculation obviously around Fitbit and Google. It’s really hard to say what we can think about that without any kind of formal announcement and whether or not it’s even a real thing.
We believe that Fitbit’s customer base is very different from ours and our product focus is also different. So it’s not something that we believe impacts us and we’re not worried about it.
In terms of other opportunities, we look at every opportunity basically in terms of what it can bring to Garmin both in terms of technology or product lines. So we would evaluate any of those opportunities based on that and what we can achieve with it going forward.”
Of course, he brushes off the concern – but what he states in the middle paragraph is mostly untrue. Fitbit and Garmin have always had huge overlap at the low-end, and have always competed head to head there. They’ve referenced Fitbit as a competitor in their earnings calls and sales guidance for years.
However – there’s also some nuances to what he says. What he’s probably trying to say is that ‘A Garmin customer is less likely to become a Fitbit customer, whereas a Fitbit customer is more likely to become a Garmin customer’. Meaning that the athlete-focused feature set of a Garmin watch is easier to ‘upgrade’ into from a Fitbit device, but harder to go back to a Fitbit device once on a Garmin (speaking purely from a feature standpoint). They have overlap, but the bulk of Garmin’s *revenue* comes from their mid-range and higher-end devices, not from the activity trackers that they still compete with Fitbit on.
The other two players this impacts are Apple and Samsung.
But predicting how it’ll impact them is a tricky beast. Obviously, this will give Wear OS strength over time, but not immediately. Apple’s integration between phone and watch is second to none. The cleanliness of that integration is in many ways the cleanliness of Fitbit as an ecosystem. Whether or not Google can find a way to port not just the overarching fitness platform to Google proper, but also retain that cleanliness remains to be seen.
I don’t see this making any appreciable negative impact on Apple (or Samsung) anytime soon. I could, however, see this having a detrimental effect on Fitbit sales near-term, whereby people actually end up on an Apple Watch (or other competitor) due to uncertainties around Fitbit. As I often say, the ‘Best Buy’ effect. Meaning, consumers of this type of device are often heavily reliant on advice from someone in a brick and mortar store like Best Buy, who can easily make an off the cuff statement when asked by a consumer which device is recommended – only to have that person respond ‘Well, Fitbit just got bought by Google and we don’t know how that’ll end up’. The person turns and buys a competitor device instead.
I’m never one to want to see less competitors in the space. But I’m not sure there was any other realistic option here. No, Fitbit wasn’t going to die this year or next year, or even in 2021. However, they were facing an issue of not being innovative anymore, which in turn causes loss of market share. Their Versa 2 launch this past summer was a prime example of that – where the global reaction was ‘shrug’. Combine that with the continued shift from lower-end activity trackers to highly integrated smartwatches like an Apple Watch, was becoming the perfect storm for the company.
They couldn’t really seem to fully lock and complete the various projects they’d announced. Whether that was the sleep tracking that took over a year to get out the door, or even broader music streaming services adoption. It was like things were stalling, as if the ship was just getting too heavy.
I think this acquisition though gives Fitbit a second life – but also gives Google a second life in the wearables realm. Remember, aside from Fossil, almost nobody was rolling out new watches with Wear OS. It had kinda sputtered.
I’m hoping we look forward to Fall 2020 with a Google Watch announcement. Something that can compete with Apple Watch in the mass market arena, but perhaps also have the flexibility to compete with companies like Garmin and others in the athletic focused space.
With that – thanks for reading!
There are two ways to connect to the NewsBlur website. The first is http://www.newsblur.com. The second is https://www.newsblur.com. The first is plain text and the second is encrypted. You get to choose which one you want to use.
Part of the draw of using an encrypted https connection instead of a plain text http connection is that you can protect your privacy. As far as I can tell, there are two reasons for preferring https over http.
One is that using an encrypted https connection to NewsBlur protects what you read from hackers or a man-in-the-middle changing your data as it comes to you. This could be your internet service provider (ISP) inserting ads or it could be snooping wifi router that you are connected to that injects malware into your content. Some companies have been known to do this and https protects you.
But the second reason is that your privacy is also protected from more benign, aggregate collections by ISPs and middlemen that sees what you read and sells that data. NewsBlur doesn’t sell any of your data and beginning this week NewsBlur can ensure that nobody other than you and the site you read can either.
The feature that is launching this week (it actually launched Monday in order for me to ensure that it works well) is a secure image proxy for all images served on NewsBlur. That means that NewsBlur will take any images that isn’t behind an encrypted https connection and proxies it behind NewsBlur’s own secure, encrypted connection.
You should notice next to no difference. The only difference you may notice is that some images may load faster, since NewsBlur has a thicker pipe to the Internet and can download data faster than your client browser can, which means that your persistent connection to NewsBlur’s servers takes over instead of having to make new connections with the associated overhead to various servers around the net.
Now you can turn on the SSL setting on the NewsBlur Web and ensure your data stays private.
And to answer the question of why you wouldn’t wan t to use https — it used to mean serving and loading pages over https gave a slight performance hit, but that’s no longer true. But some people use http because it will load images from both http and https websites, whereas loading NewsBlur via https means that you can only load images via https, as loading an image via http will throw up a Mixed Content Warning. This update addresses that issue and it is my hope that http-only will be phased out.
In high school, I was voted “most optimistic,” one of those senior superlatives that only functions on the periphery of what our peers really care about. We opened our yearbooks for “best eyes” or “best looking” or “class clown.” I had no idea why I got that vote.
Like any other teen, I dealt with my own layers of daily High School Shit, both real and make believe. I had good friends, but never felt popular enough. I was on athletic teams, but never the cool ones. I got good grades and dreamed about what college might hold for me.
I had bad acne. I often felt sad. Sometimes depressed. And, looking back from today, can’t recall how optimism came to be a part of that routine, let alone what everyone saw that I obviously missed.
I also now realize, years later, that I should have been more welcoming of such a compliment. Whether in an archival book dedicated to memories people may want to forget as easily as remember, or in real life, I was simply bad at accepting that kind of treatment. Mostly because I felt I didn’t deserve it.
Generally speaking, I’m bad at accepting words of praise, but definitive statements of personal qualities, especially democratically voted ones, felt more like a burden than benefit. At the time, there were definitely days where a forced smile was needed. Finding aspects of authentic optimism was probably more daunting than anything.
But it’s also a good thing that’s all in the past. Personal growth is slow and hard. Pretty much everyone is not wired for automatic self-awareness. It takes work. And now, on the new side of my latest birthday, it feels good to take stock and realize that maybe I did deserve that commendation so long ago.
Having a birthday so close to New Year’s creates an odd connection to annual conversations of rebirth and renewal. As soon as I celebrate one on Jan. 1, it’s almost time to do it all over again. Near-universally, both dates act as an arbitrary reset button when we can or we’re supposed to reflect on all that was, and yet to be. But hot damn if jamming all that in the course of one week feels like a bit much. Fun, for sure, but a bit much.
This year, maybe for the first time, it doesn’t feel so bad. The self-awareness I could have really used when I was 18 has taken hold. Life experiences good, bad, terrifying, and altering all took place across 2018. They’re not over just because a year has passed, or because I got to turn 34, but I hope and think and believe I’m ready. For whatever.
We’re all lucky for what we have, and in a way, lucky for what we lose, too. Finding happiness, let alone holding onto ways to remain happy, is humanistic work we all put in, with small increments, over the course of our lives. It’s about learning all the time. To be OK with looking on the bright side or finding the absurd in everything and laughing so god damned much you sometimes don’t know why you started in the first place. Belly laughs are fucking medicinal, I tell you.
Deep breaths help. And friends. And talking to people, whether personally close or professionally paid. It’s never easy, but, dear reader, it. is. worth it.
It wasn’t until a few years ago I stopped to think about that high school award of sorts bestowed on me by peers who knew me to various degrees. It never occurred to me at the time that the way they saw me, and what that meant to them, may have mattered. I tried hard in everything I did, even when it hurt. I just didn’t realize it. Ignorance to your own effort is a kind of blind optimism, I suppose. And maybe in the best way.
I had no idea why I got that vote back then. I’m really glad I got it today.