The smartwatch market is going through rough times. Plummeting sales have hurt a number of manufacturers. It has also proven to be an opportunity for some other players. Just last month, Fitbit acquired Pebble in a bid “to accelerate the expansion of our platform and ecosystem to make Fitbit a vital part of daily life for a wider set of consumers.” The company today made a second acquisition, this time scooping up startup Vector Watch for an undisclosed sum.
Today, we are happy to announce that the Vector Watch team and our software platform are joining Fitbit, the leader in the connected health and fitness market! We believe this is an important milestone as a moment when we will start building other new and amazing products, features and experiences, incorporating our unique technology and knowhow with Fitbit’s experience and global community.
Much as we saw with the Pebble acquisition, Fitbit is focusing on the software side of things and will not offer new Vector smartwatches. Look instead to its own products starting to offer more smartwatch-like features in the future.
It remains to be seen if Vector Watch CEO Joe Santana who was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Timex Group between 1999 and 2007 will remain with Fitbit. It’s also unclear if Chief Technology Office Andrei Pitis, Chief Operating Officer Ron Spencer who worked at Bulova and British product designer Steve Jarvis who worked at Timex and Nike will remain.
Vector Watch unveiled its first smartwatches at Baselworld 2015. Its Luna and Meridian watches used a proprietary operating system and monochrome displays to offer battery life of up to 30 days. Vector watches will continue to work after the Vector Watch acquisition. While people will still be able to submit new watch faces, developers will no longer be able to develop new streams for the watches.
Sources : Fortune // Vector Watch