It’s no secret that Pebble has been struggling when it comes to making enough money to stay afloat. Reports of this started to swirl around the tech community even before they launched the Kickstarter campaign for the Pebble 2, Time 2, and Pebble Core. The crowdfunding campaign was incredibly successful as they were able to bring in over $12 million from over 66,000 backers.
Still, the company hasn’t been able to bring in enough funds to meet their own demands.
Reports of this $40 million acquisition began at the end of last month, but even then it doesn’t seem like a good thing for Pebble’s future. The deal was reported by some to be as low as $34 million, and even that wouldn’t even be enough to cover Pebble’s current debts. Some said that Fitbit will only be taking on parts of Pebble, owning some of the company’s IP like their operating system, watch apps, and cloud services, while leaving them to deal with their current stock and remaining server hardware.
Now, the acquisition is official and we should expect substantial changes because of it. We’re told that Pebble will no longer be promoting, manufacturing, or selling any devices. While they are telling us Pebble devices will continue to work as normal, they do make sure to say “functionality or service quality may be reduced in the future.” Warranty support for Pebble watches are no longer available, and returns of Pebble.com orders that were successful before December 7th will receive full refunds.
Speaking of Pebble.com, the website will no longer be accepting or fulfilling orders (including Pebble 2 pre-orders). If you purchased your Pebble device from a retail store, you’ll have to go by their return/exchange policy instead of contacting Pebble. Kickstarter backers who have yet to receive their product will receive a refund within 4-8 weeks in the form of a chargeback (with no action needed from the consumer).
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