Pebble

The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried

Shut down
19902026

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]

  1. 2012
  2. 11 April 2012 Funding
    Kickstarter record: $10.27 million

    68,929 backers make it the largest crowdfunding campaign to date.

  3. 2013
  4. 23 January 2013 Launch
    The first Pebble ships

    E-paper screen, week-long battery, open SDK.

  5. 2015
  6. 4 March 2015 Funding
    Pebble Time raises $20.3 million

    The company breaks its own Kickstarter record.

  7. 24 April 2015 Decline
    The Apple Watch arrives

    The premium market is taken; cheap bands take the rest.

  8. 2016
  9. 7 December 2016 Acquisition
    Fitbit buys the software; Pebble ceases operations

    Warranties end immediately; hardware is dead.

  10. 2018
  11. 30 June 2018 Shutdown
    Pebble servers shut down

    Volunteer project Rebble keeps the watches alive.

  12. 2025
  13. 27 January 2025 Revival
    Google open-sources PebbleOS

    The founder announces new Pebble-compatible watches.

The site through time

Browse getpebble.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Pebble Technology 2013–2016 Founded Crowdfunded; ceased operations December 2016
Fitbit 2016–2018 Bankruptcy sale, software and IP only, reported tens of millions Hardware line ended; servers off in 2018

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
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 to make new Pebble-compatible watches after Google open-sourced the original operating system.

Similar projects

Microsoft Kin Dead in 48 days 2010–2011 Zune Microsoft's answer to the iPod, five years late 2006–2015 iPod 1,000 songs in your pocket 2001–2022 Google Glass The face computer the public rejected 2013–2023 HP TouchPad Killed 49 days after launch 2011–2011 Apple Newton The handheld that was right, ten years early 1993–1998

Sources [edit]

  1. Pebble confirms it's shutting down, devs and software going to Fitbit TechCrunch 7 December 2016 [archived]
  2. Fitbit Will Shut Down Pebble's Servers Fortune 6 April 2017 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).