More than a decade ago, the Pebble watch released to cult acclaim, if only modest financial success.
Pebble is now set to return, as announced by the company’s original founder Eric Migicovsky.
In a blog post on his website, Migicovsky explains this is all possible because Google has now made the Pebble platform’s software open source.
This may seem a head-scratcher to some original Pebble owners. But Fitbit acquired Pebble assets in 2016 for $23 million, as per its 2017 financial reporting.
"I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this,” says Migicovsky.
There are now plans to create a new Pebble watch, made in the image of the originals.
“A small team and I are diving back into the world of hardware to bring Pebble back!”
“This time round, we’re keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time! I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches,” says Migicovsky.
This was followed by the Pebble Time with metal bezel in 2015, and the slightly more upmarket Pebble Time Steel later that same year. It was also backed on Kickstarter, with a campaign that raised upwards of $20 million.
I used the Pebble Time for some time back at its release, and found it an entirely charming watch. I also reviewed the Pebble Time Steel, but found its incorporation of more advanced features felt at odds with that core pro-simplicity message of the original models.
Migicovksy posted on Medium about the eventual failure of Pebble, putting it down to the second generation losing the vision of what made the series a success in the first place.
“The underlying problem was that we shifted from making something we knew people wanted, to making an ill-defined product that we hoped people wanted,” He wrote back in 2022. Fingers crossed the new Pebble watch will get back on track 10-plus years later.