It was just last month that Fitbit acquired Pebble, the now defunct wearable startup founded by Canadian Eric Migicovsky, and many of its best software engineers, and already the company is putting those assets to good use.
In an interview with multiple US-based publications at CES 2017, Fitbit CEO James Park said the company intends to launch its own app store āas soon as possible.ā He later added, in an interview with The Verge, that the company plans to do so using assets acquired from Pebble, noting that the startup had āworked out a lot of the kinksā that go into building an app marketplace.
Park didnāt say it in so many words, but itās likely the company will release a new smartwatch to coincide with the launch of its app store.
In the same interview with The Verge, Park said, āthere so many different applications [our partners] want to writeā¦ from fitness-related ones to pill applications. And we donāt have the support in place for that right now, or any software infrastructure on our devices to run those devices.ā
Indeed, Fitbitās wearables have a limited software scope. For the most part, they do things like step and calorie tracking, but little else. To accommodate the more advanced functionality afforded by third-party apps, it follows then that Fitbit will have to fundamentally rework how devices like the Blaze and Charge 2 work, or, more likely, launch an entirely new device.
Just donāt expect a flood of consumer-focused apps. As evidenced by Parkās statements, Fitbit appears mostly concerned about developing apps to appease its corporate customers.
This article was originally published on MobileSyrup
Feature image credit: MobileSyrup