The foremost player in fitness-wearable space Fitbit bought Pebble smartwatch early this month and this is certainly one of the biggest news to shake the mobile tech community, and not in a good way. Considering how it unambiguously put a stop to Pebble's hardware business, including the unfulfilled Pebble Time 2 Kickstarter
Pebble's First Action To Preserve The Pebble Experience Into The Future
According to Mobile Syrup, Pebble has released a new blog post that details its "first steps forward with Fitbit" after its recent announcement of the $40 million acquisition. In particular, the post emphasizes that users can rest assured that Pebble software and services will continue to be supported through 2017. Despite discontinued cloud services, core functionalities won't break and will be kept updated in the coming months.
Fitbit is going out of its way to keep Pebble software and services running through 2017. The CloudPebble, Pebble SDK, Timeline APIs, firmware availability, mobile apps, developer portal, and Pebble app store are all elements of the Pebble network that will stay in service at this time. Pebble developers are welcome to keep creating and updating apps. Pebble users are free to keep enjoying their watches, says Pebble Developer site.
Pebble Assures A Continued Way Forward
The devices will continue to work, as long as they don't need any repairs. There's already a community-organized "Rebble" effort to extend their use even beyond 2017. How far that will go though, remains to be seen, but it looks like Pebble is open to helping that along. Whether Fitbit will be backing it, however, is another question.
For now Pebble Health features are not in danger of discontinuation. The Pebble's Health API data is not reliant on cloud services and feeds directly into the Pebble mobile app, Apple HealthKit and Google Fit. On the other hand, Pebble has started giving out refunds to its initially successful but now grimly botched Kickstarter, and it appears that even that is already experiencing a lot of friction.
