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Fitbit lost me when they refused to support HealthKit. As it stands I'm not sure they can escape their demise as the market transitions from limited function de
by spiralpolitik 9y ago
Fitbit lost me when they refused to support HealthKit. As it stands I'm not sure they can escape their demise as the market transitions from limited function devices to multi function devices like the Apple Watch. They strike me as getting rolled over the same way Diamond, Archos, and Creative got crushed by the iPod.
GoPro has a similar problem. Outside of special circumstances most smartphone cameras are now good enough for most consumer needs and will only get better. I think they could survive if they target the extreme sports type niche but otherwise I don't see them achieving escape velocity.
Both could be good acquisition targets a la Withings and Nokia. But the number of possible buyers is limited. Microsoft is possibly the only one that comes to mind that doesn't have anything in either space although given the failure of Windows Phone I'm not sure they have the desire to try something similar in a different market.
- brlewis 9y agoActually the iPod was not a multi-function device. Palm Pilot was. But it turned out the specialized device was the one that transitioned into the multi-function device people wanted.
- KekDemaga 9y agoThe iPod touch is essentially an iPhone without a cellular connection.
- djrogers 9y agoBut the iPod Touch didn’t crush Archos, diamond, and Rio. It came about after the iPhone was in the market...
- spiralpolitik 9y agoAccording to Wikipedia both Diamond and Archos players were DOA by 2005, two years before the iPhone was released. Creative struggled on for a few years post iPhone. 2005 was the year of the iPod Photo and the iPod Video, although the beginning of the iPod as multi-function device started in 2002 with addition of the PDA functionality. By 2006 Apple had 72-74% of the MP3 player market, with SanDisk, Creative, Zune, Sony, Samsung, and other accounting for the remainder. I seem to recall most of the damage was done by the iPod Mini.