Pebble price to deal with Apple Watch: challenges remain

In an effort to deal with Apple's watch, Pebble has had to lower the price of its products, but the strategy is likely to face many challenges, according to a Tuesday edition of the Bloomberg Businessweek network. The following is the full text of the article: in Eric Mitchkawsky Eric Migicovsky, Apple's Watch most delighted him was the 350 dollar price. The founder of Pebble, the smart watch maker, has reason to worry, since Apple has always been adept at dominating the world in emerging equipment. Mitchkawsky now believes Apple Watch's position is a notch higher than Pebble's. The price gap between the two may give his start-up company a rare opportunity to attract consumers who neither want to spend too much money nor read text messages directly on their wrists. They are accustomed to gold, accustomed to luxury materials, they told the world, this is not just a technology product. Mitchkawsky says it's a great choice for people who want to find Rolex or Teghaja and are willing to buy smart watches. To prevent the boundaries between these two products from being clear enough, Pebble has just reduced the price of its own products to $100 trillion, 50 dollars lower than before. (Luxury edition Pebble Steelcompany also cut the price by 30 US dollars to 200 dollars.) The company is also expanding its retail channels, and consumers will soon be buying the company's products in 10,000 stores. The expansion was carried out mainly through the UK and several Scandinavian countries. Pebble will also fix a major flaw in its software through a single upgrade, enabling applications to run in the background, which is a prerequisite for pedometer and sleep monitors. Fitness tracking is the most basic attraction of a wrist-type computer, and Pebble lags behind Jawbone and Fitbit. Pebble has always had enough hardware to run these applications, but the software has always been a big short board. Jawbone, Misfit and swim.com have developed new applications for the platform. If it were to rival Apple, Pebble would have no chance of winning, so it needed to target market segments. The start-up company has financed 10 million of billions of dollars through Kickstarter platforms, and has financed 15 million of billions of dollars through venture capital. Apple has recorded the same amount of money every 70 minutes in the past year. Limited resources and lower prices make it difficult for Pebble to meet early demands. Mitchkawsky says they have hired supply-chain experts from companies such as IBM and Cisco, and have weathered early growth headaches. One reason for the company's price cuts is that they have learned how to avoid costs such as air travel. Although the company refused to disclose specific smart watch sales, the total has reached hundreds of thousands of. Pebble has a first-served advantage that will continue until next year when Apple officially starts selling appsLe watch. By then, Pebble will be a cheaper, weaker watch, but it still has a number of unique advantages, not only for longer batteries, but also for independent tracking of fitness data-even in the pool. Is this enough to escape the siege of Apple? Research has shown that wrist-computers have attracted people's attention. According to Forrester, a US market research firm, 42% of Americans say they are interested in wearing computing equipment on their wrists, up from 28% a year ago. But there is no clear explanation for what functions these computers should have. Early smart watches, including Pebble, have focused on reducing the time users can watch their phones. Apple Watch is not limited to this, it can open the hotel door, instead of credit card, and provide a variety of health data. Apple has already planned a broader strategy that includes new habits. Forrester analyst JP Gund (JP Gownder) said. But to provide these experiences, you need to use the sensor and processing power that Pebble lacks. It is unclear whether Apple Watch is the smart watch that people need. But if so, Pebble's task is bound to be even tougher.