Alphabet, Google’s parent company has announced that they are buying the popular wearable company, Fitbit.
The tech giant is buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion which will allow them to venture into the wearable market with a strong headstart.
This acquisition by Google makes a lot of sense. Google has their Android Wear OS platform which has largely fell behind compared to the Apple Watch OS platform. Fitbit has great hardware that has made its name around the world and this is an excellent buy by Alphabet.
Fitbit sold 3.5 million devices in Q2 2019. However their smartwatch revenue declined 27% due to weak Fitbit versa Lite sales. International revenue formed 42% of the total revenue while their Fitbit Inspire, Fitbit Ace 2 and Charge 3 represented 68% of their total sales.
The combination of Fitbit hardware and Wear OS could mean that Google could either push Wear OS onto current Fitbit hardware or they could come up with new smartwatches that run Wear OS.
This news also comes a time after Google bought some mysterious smartwatch technology from Fossil for a cool $40 million. The technology that Google bought was an evolution of something Fossil bought from a company called Misfit that was “new to the market” and a “product that has features and benefits that aren’t in the category today.”
The combination of that “mysterious” technology they bought from Fossil and the acquisition of Fitbit would mean that Google is planning something interesting for the wearables market. Apple is currently the leader in the wearables and Google is planning something interesting to counter them.
