Fitbit just bought another smartwatch company. Following its purchase of Pebble at the end of 2016, the firm is now snapping up smartwatch-maker Vector, a company which is only a year and a half old.
Vector, a startup company in Romania, was trying to make its name with affordable smartwatches, known as the Vector Luna and Vector Meridian.
Some of the devices were affordable, but different bands made the prices go quite high. Vector won't release more hardware, but existing devices will continue to be supported for some time.
Fitbit watch, coming soon
Vector's watches feature an e-ink LCD screen, 30-day battery life and support for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.
They run on Vector's own operating system, and the company allowed developers to create apps and watch faces.
Founder and CTO of Vector, Andre Pitis, confirmed to TechCrunch that the company was purchased for its software platform and design team, rather than the hardware. Fitbit didn’t purchase Pebble’s hardware technology either.
What this does seem to show is that Fitbit may be readying itself to create its own smartwatch from the best bits of Vector and Pebble.
Fitbit bought Pebble for access to the software engineers, testers and intellectual property, so we may see Fitbit combine the operating systems, apps and cloud services of both Pebble and Vector.
This is all just speculation right now, but Fitbit is clearly gathering these companies together under the Fitbit umbrella for a reason.
Fitbit has yet to create a proper smartwatch, instead focusing on fitness-oriented watch-like devices – but 2017 may be the year that all changes.
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