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Fitbit: Making Fitness ‘Smart’?

Can Fitbit compete? In an age of ever expanding technological advances, is it possible for a single gadget to track everything? I have worked in the fitness industry for more than 10 years and have seen many clients enter the studio sporting the latest in fitness technology. From heartrate monitors and Bluetooth headphones, to GPS trackers and nutrition apps… I’ve pretty much seen it all. In the midst of all this, we are continually checking our phones to ensure we stay connected to our friends, our family and the rest of the world! Fitbit is attempting to overcome some recent growing pains by providing consumers with a product that will ‘do it all’. They will be placing themselves up against Apple and Garmin, two giants in the smartwatch industry. Fitbit definitely has their work cut out for them and the road has been anything but smooth.

Credit: wareable.com

Yahoo Finance has nabbed a couple of photos reported to show Fitbit’s upcoming smartwatch, along with a handful of reports that make the whole undertaking sound like one big fiasco. Sources are talking complaints about design, production delays, antenna issues and software problems. The device looks to share design language with the company’s Blaze device, which was something between a fitness tracker and a full-fledged smartwatch. A source told Yahoo that the device, codenamed “Higgs,” is “definitely not sexy,” which the renders seem to bear out.

It’s said to sport GPS, have local storage for music and built-in heart-rate monitoring. The contactless payment and four-day battery life, meanwhile, seem like no-brainers, given some of the acquisitions the company has made over the past year. It’s also apparently scheduled to arrive with some optional Bluetooth headphones, marking a new product category for the wearable maker.

Fitbit, Smart Watch
Credit: Yahoo Finance (techcrunch.com)

The device was reportedly due out in the spring in an attempt to get it out well before Apple’s next watch announcement, but a number of factors have apparently pushed it back to the fall. Among them are GPS problems due to antenna placement and some recently reported software issues.

As a number of other hardware makers have been abandoning the smartwatch space due to declining consumer interest, Fitbit has run toward it, picking up troubled pioneer Pebble, along with Vector and Coin in hopes of making a device that would crack the whole space wide open, as few beyond Apple and Garmin are really making a go of things.

The future success of the company is a lot to hang on a single device, and as such Fitbit has clearly invested everything into the product. Perhaps too much, in fact. Three acquisitions, disrupting the smartwatch space and its own long-term health are a lot to pour into a single device. Fitbit will really need to get this one right. Thus far, at least, it sounds like it’s been doing anything but.

Source: TechCrunch.com

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