Founder Pebble: Time smartwatch failed in 2015 due to large bezels

The Pebble Time smartwatch in 2015 failed due to large bezels and a focus on the wrong audience. That is what the founder of Pebble says in a blog post. Due to the failure of the smartwatch, the smartwatch maker ended up in heavy weather and the company had to sell itself in 2016.

The Pebble Time in 2015 had bigger bezels than other smartwatches of that generation, because the project was seriously behind, says Eric Michigovsky in a blog post about Pebble. “The project was so behind schedule that I didn’t have the balls to adjust the design,” said the founder. The future of the company depended in part on the success of the Pebble Time in 2015.

By that year, Pebble had ramped up the cost of investing in technology. In this way, it wanted to stay ahead of the market, but as a result, the young company ended up in financial difficulties. In 2013, there was still a net profit of 9 million dollars, while the company broke even in 2014. In 2015, the increase in investment was reflected in the appearance of three new models. In addition to the Pebble Time, that was the Time Steel and Time Round. The latter was the manufacturer’s only round watch.

With the Time, according to Michigovsky, Pebble tried to shift the focus from its core target audience of geeks to a broader audience with productivity spearheaded and later fitness. That failed. Pebble sold itself to Fitbit in 2016, after the release of the Pebble 2 and 2 HR. Google, in turn, bought Fitbit again a few years later. Pebble watches are still usable by community initiative Rebble.io.

Looking back: video review of the Pebble Time