“There’s the lesser known side business-to-business side of Fitbit, which is their partnerships with health insurance companies and direct corporate wellness programming,” says Gartner senior analyst Alan Antin. Gartner senior analyst Alan Antin says Google could benefit from Fitbit’s expertise in working alongside corporate partners and other stakeholders in the healthcare world. It’s already working with insurance companies, other firms and even the government of Singapore to provide customers, employees and citizens with fitness trackers in what are likely lucrative deals, for instance. It’s also a familiar play: Google purchased portions of smartphone maker HTC in 2017 for $1.1 billion, jumpstarting production of its Pixel smartphones.įitbit, however, has been doing exactly that. With the revenue from smartwatch sales industry-wide set to double to $34 billion by 2023, the company’s urgency is understandable. Fitbit’s technical chops could help Google come up with a wearable to take on its biggest rivals. But the company’s products haven’t matched up to the competition, like the Apple Watch or Samsung’s Galaxy Watch. Google has already spent big money on wearable tech - in 2019, it paid $40 million for technology and personnel from watchmaker Fossil Group’s research and development team, for instance. If completed, the move would spell the end of an independent Fitbit, a 12-year-old hardware firm credited with popularizing the self-quantifying phenomenon that has so many of us comparing our daily step counts against our friends and loved ones. In announcing its planned $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness tracking company Fitbit, Google said the deal will “help spur innovation in wearables” - at least, that’s how Senior Vice President of Devices & Services Rick Osterloh put it in a blog post.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |