Pebble
The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried
Pebble was the smartwatch that made Kickstarter famous, raising a record $10.3 million in 2012 and shipping in January 2013 with a week-long battery and an e-paper screen. Apple and cheap fitness trackers squeezed it out; Fitbit bought its software in December 2016 and the servers went dark on 30 June 2018.
Timeline [edit]
- 2012
-
11 April 2012
Funding
Kickstarter record: $10.27 million
68,929 backers make it the largest crowdfunding campaign to date.
- 2013
-
23 January 2013
Launch
The first Pebble ships
E-paper screen, week-long battery, open SDK.
- 2015
-
4 March 2015
Funding
Pebble Time raises $20.3 million
The company breaks its own Kickstarter record.
-
24 April 2015
Decline
The Apple Watch arrives
The premium market is taken; cheap bands take the rest.
- 2016
-
7 December 2016
Acquisition
Fitbit buys the software; Pebble ceases operations
Warranties end immediately; hardware is dead.
- 2018
-
30 June 2018
Shutdown
Pebble servers shut down
Volunteer project Rebble keeps the watches alive.
- 2025
-
27 January 2025
Revival
Google open-sources PebbleOS
The founder announces new Pebble-compatible watches.
-
25 July 2025
Revival
Pebble gets its name back
Eric Migicovsky's Core Devices regains the Pebble trademark and ships new watches (Pebble 2 Duo, Pebble Time 2) on the open-sourced PebbleOS.
How it looked [edit]
The site through time
Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: getpebble.com, 28 May 2014 →
Browse getpebble.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downloads ▲ | 2 million | 7 December 2016 | Reported Approximate lifetime watches sold |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: Pebble ceased operations on 7 December 2016 after Fitbit acquired its software and intellectual property; the servers that supported the watches were shut down on 30 June 2018.
Our analysis: Pebble proved the demand for smartwatches and then got squeezed from both sides: Apple took the premium market and cheap fitness bands took the bottom. A crowdfunding-scale company could not fund hardware iterations against companies that treat watches as a rounding error.
History [edit]
The record that changed crowdfunding
Eric Migicovsky could not raise venture money for a watch that talked to a phone, so in April 2012 he put it on Kickstarter with a $100,000 goal. It took 68,929 backers and $10.27 million, the largest crowdfunding campaign in history at the time, and it turned Kickstarter from a curiosity into a legitimate path to building hardware.
The product delivered on its promises: a reflective e-paper screen readable in direct sunlight, a battery that lasted a week rather than a day, physical buttons, and an open SDK that produced thousands of community watchfaces and apps. Pebble Time raised another $20.3 million in 2015, breaking its own record.
Squeezed from both ends
Then the Apple Watch arrived in 2015 and took the top of the market, while $30 fitness bands took the bottom. Pebble sold around two million watches in total, respectable for a startup and irrelevant against Apple. A 2016 funding round fell through, the company cut 25% of staff, and in December 2016 Fitbit bought the software, firmware and key staff for a reported figure in the tens of millions, well below Pebble's debts.
Pebble ceased operations on 7 December 2016; warranties ended immediately. Fitbit kept the servers alive as a courtesy until 30 June 2018, and the community had already built Rebble, a volunteer replacement backend that keeps Pebble watches working to this day. In 2025 Migicovsky returned: Google open-sourced the original operating system in January, his new company Core Devices got the Pebble trademark back on 25 July 2025, and new watches (Pebble 2 Duo, Pebble Time 2) shipped under the old name. The Pebble of 2012 to 2016 is still gone; the brand is not.
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Sources [edit]
- Pebble confirms it's shutting down, devs and software going to Fitbit TechCrunch 7 December 2016 [archived]
- Pebble Smartwatch Owners Get a Small Piece of Good News Fortune 6 April 2017 [archived]
- Pebble smartwatches are truly coming back as 'Pebble 2 Duo' 9to5Google 25 July 2025
- Fitbit: Pebble support ends June 30 The Register 24 January 2018
Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).