Pebble Watch

The Pebble Watch (the black one) arrived a week ago. It was after many months of anticipation and waiting. And many months late, if we refer to the original schedule. The short story is: I like it a lot. Not that it is perfect. Far from that. But it is the first smart watch that feels like a watch. It is reasonably thin (much thinner than the Sony brick). And it is way less cumbersome to use everyday.

There are three aspects why the Pebble stands out as a smartwatch:

1. The e-Ink display meaning it is always showing the time and does not require a second hand to press a button to activate the display
2. The low energy consumption (it is now running for the eighth day on the initial charge - the Sony could barely handle eight hours)
3. The waterproof case with magnetic charging cable clip

I backed the Pebble Kickstarter project to get an insider's view on the entire process of creating a software - hardware project from scratch to the market. After all this is what I am doing now at my own startup. And I am scared. Really, really scared.

Hardware is very difficult for a startup. Which, surprisingly, is a good thing. Because there are not many competitors. Yes, there always are the big guys, but it was David who conquered Goliath, remember? The big guys move slowly and they do not pay attention to the details, and most importantly, they very rarely have a clue about the cross-domain design. Nest is the perfect example of out-of-the-box, smart design thinking, putting together a very innovative software+hardware product and now own the market. The best Honeywell can do is fight them in courts.

A watch seems to be such a simple device: a case, four buttons, a belt, a charging cable and a Cortex-M3 - based electronics board with Bluetooth LE radio. And they have had so many issues with it. Not the electronics. But things so simple as buttons and colors (at the moment only the black color is available, my other titanium grey is delayed for another six months or so). Our own hardware project seems to be several times more complex: an industrial - grade computer with more than ten communication subsystems. The good news is we have the case ready, so it is "only" a matter of designing the electronics and software.

Yes, software. This is something the Pebble team probably underestimated. The Pebble watch has only the very basic features. Several watchfaces to choose from, music player control, notifications. Nothing fancy. The Cortex-M3 CPU is capable of much, much more.

Obviously the trend today is to get the hardware platform out to the market and then start rolling the software upgrades. But my feeling is they started the serious software development too late. Especially as they had the money from the backers. Plenty of money. So there was either the difficulty of building the team or the lack of management focus (Eric had to focus on the hardware manufacturing process and the entire supply chain management instead).

I wonder how much time they have left. I mean it is a real surprise no one has created a competitive smartwatch yet. The Pebble concept was out there for more than a year. None of the big guys (Samsung, Apple, where have you been?) could beat the tiny startup. But they are coming. The success of the Pebble depends on the speed and quality and breadth of the software upgrades to come. They have to build the critical mass. Which - I was told - is at 18%. This is an extremely high bar. I do not see 18% of Android users wearing Pebbles. But this will depend more on the actions by Google (Watch SDK?), Samsung (SamWatch?) and Apple (iWatch). The only thing Pebble can do is keep working on the software. This is the fight against time. They have to reach that critical mass to be more than just a Wikipedia entry of being the first. It is not getting to the top, it is staying at the top that matters. A monumental task for the small team. I keep my fingers crossed, and you should too!