The inside story behind Pebble’s demise

Backchannel:

“Adventuresome” is perhaps a kind way of describing Pebble’s year: 2016 started in crisis. The year before, the once-profitable company dropped into the red, and hit the second half 2015 by not meeting its sales goals. Pebble would never be profitable again. In March of 2016, Migicovsky laid off a quarter of his staff of 160, just as the company moved from its cramped, loft-like Palo Alto headquarters into a gleaming, spacious new office tower in downtown Redwood City. In its optimism, the company had rented two floors; now it fit on just one.

It turned out that both Pebble — and, incidentally, Apple —had misjudged the wearables market.

I think it remains to be seen if Apple has “misjudged” the market.