Fitbit won't discontinue Pebble smartwatch services for at least a year
Fitbit announced on December 7 that they had acquired the assets and intellectual property of former Kickstarter-funded company Pebble. Soon, reports of how Pebble services would shut down followed. This worried many Pebble’s smartwatch owners. However, Jon Barlow, a developer advocate at Fitbit recently published a post that assures Pebble owners that Pebble smartwatch services will be running through 2017.
"Fitbit is going out of its way to keep Pebble software and services running through 2017. To be clear, no one on this freshly-formed team seeks to brick Pebble watches in active service. The Pebble SDK, CloudPebble, Timeline APIs, firmware availability, mobile apps, developer portal and Pebble appstore are all elements of the Pebble ecosystem that will remain in service at this time. Pebble developers are welcome to keep creating and updating apps. Pebble users are free to keep enjoying their watches,” the post read.
“The Pebble community always filled in the gaps our small team needed help with, and you continue to do so. We’ve seen a massive influx of community developers teaming up to keep the Pebble watch experience alive, long into the future,” the post further added acknowledging Pebble’s efforts.
"The mobile app updates will ensure the operation of core Pebble functions, even with cloud services discontinued -- they won't break functionality," Barlow wrote. "After this update, Pebble Health will continue to work as it does today."
