Fitbit has confirmed it's finally working on its own smartwatch.
It’ll mark the first time the company has made a fully fledged smartwatch. The Fitbit Blaze was released in 2015 but was instead marketed as a 'smart fitness watch'. So what's the distinction?
Fitbit has bought a number of smartwatch centric companies over the past few months picking up the likes of Pebble, Vector Watch and Coin.
We can expect to see elements of those three companies make an impact on the Fitbit smartwatch.
CEO James Park said in a statement: “We believe we are uniquely positioned to succeed in delivering what consumers are looking for in a smartwatch: stylish, well-designed devices that combine the right general purpose functionality with a focus on health and fitness."
Time to solve the decline
The announcement of a smartwatch came in the same release as the company announced job cuts after poor sales performance at the end of 2016. The company had a disappointing Black Friday and Christmas period, despite launching the new Fitbit Charge 2 and Flex 2.
Times look tough for the company. Fitbit now expects 2016 fourth-quarter revenue to be in the range of $572-$580 million, rather than the originally projected $725-$750 million.
Whether launching a smartwatch is the way to address those shortcomings is currently unclear though, considering that sales of numerous Android Wear and other wearables aren't exactly through the roof either.
- Read our Fitbit Blaze review
