Although Apple has been the attention hog in the smartwatch marketplace with its upcoming Apple Watch, Pebble has quietly moved forward, shipping over 1 million of its popular wearable device, and making big plans for 2015.
CEO Eric Migicovsky revealed that the company shipped its one millionth Pebble on December 31st of last year. That’s more than double of what Pebble reported in March, indicating that price cuts and new feature additions later in the year successfully boosted sales figures.
While smartwatches from Apple – and those running on Google’s Android Wear – grab the spotlight, Pebble quietly continues to make plans for 2015, which include both new products, and a new software platform.
Pebble CEO Migicovsky says Pebble while Google and Apple’s smartwatches have been focused on apps, similar to smartphones, Pebble’s new software will be quite different.
“We’ve found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch,” boasts Migicovsky, before adding that while apps will continue to exist on Pebble, they won’t be the main focus of the platform. “It doesn’t look like what we have today, and it doesn’t look like what’s on your smartphone,” added Migicovsky.
2014 turned out to be an “investment year” for Pebble, who has increased its employee headcount from around 30 to over 100. The company lured some members of the webOS design team over from LG, and they have been given the task of building the new Pebble software platform.
Pebble is known as a developer-friendly company, launching a web-based emulator earlier this month which allows developers to build and test apps via the web. Pebble boasts nearly 25,000 developers, who have created over 6,000 apps and watchfaces for the platform.
While Apple has the smartwatch spotlight at the moment, it’s clear that Pebble doesn’t plan to allow itself to just fade into the shadows without a fight.
