The world of wearables as we know it is changing. Not so long ago it was revealed that Fitbit will be acquiring Pebble for the sum of $40 million, while obliterating future Pebble products expected a debut on the market in 2017.
Yes, the Pebble Time 2 and Pebble Core won’t be shipping out to customers and Kickstarter backers will be getting their money back. Right now it seems quite obvious that Fitbit doesn’t seem to be interested in keeping the Pebble brand alive.
However, it does seem that Pebble’s services will survive the acquisition – at least through 2017. According to a post on the Pebble developer blog, customers should rest assured “no one in the freshly-formed team seeks to brick Pebble watches in active service.”
So for the time being, the Pebble SDK, CloudPebble, Timeline APIs, firmaware availability, mobile apps, developer portal and Pebble appstore will continue to be available.
This is relatively good news, considering that Pebble owners are given one more year to enjoy their smartwatch fully. However, even after support stops it doesn’t mean you will be forced to give up on the watch.
Pebble says that the “mobile app updates will ensure the operation of core Pebble functions, even with cloud services discontinued – they won’t break functionality.”
The features in danger of getting discontinued are those that relay on third-party services like dictation, messaging and weather. Although Fitbit is willing to work with Pebble in order to update those mobile apps to lower dependence on scattered cloud services.
