INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In January 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion; the acquisition was completed the following day, but since then,
Nest integration has been a controlled burn
Initially, the company existed as a subsidiary of the newly-formed Alphabet Inc., but in early 2018, Google tightened its grip and
integrated it directly into its hardware division
Over the next year and a half, Nest became the face and name of Google smart home offering, a division that grown quickly as Google
Home/Google Nest has become one of the top two players in the U.S
smart home category, rivaled only by Amazon Alexa/Echo offerings
All the while, wearables have been an also-ran: Google has clearly had an interest in the category, launching Android Wear in 2014
The company partnered with some of consumer hardware biggest names, including Motorola, Asus, Sony, Huawei and LG, but to little fanfare
A year ahead the release of Android Wear (now Wear OS), Apple brought its own smartwatch to market, effectively leaving the competition in
the dust.
The Apple Watch would soon eclipse the rest of the wearable industry; numbers from Canalys in August 2019 show Apple at 37.9
percent of the total North American wearable band market
Fossil, the only Wear OS partner to crack the top five, is in a distant fifth, with 4.1%.
Google Fitbit purchase could reshape its
healthcare ambitions
Samsung and Garmin have found success with their own offerings, but both are far behind Fitbit at second place
Founded in 2007, Fitbit would eventually become synonymous with fitness trackers
A humble startup when it showcased its first product (an eponymous 3D pedometer) on stage at our TC50 event in 2008, Fitbit rise has been an
Fitbit predicted and eventually came to define the wearable zeitgeist, finding itself at the forefront of the next big wave in consumer
electronics after the smartphone
As the mobile category has plateaued, wearables continue to grow at an impressive pace
Let take a moment to appreciate what has been an impressive run
The last few years, however, have been far rockier as Fitbit stumbled and sputtered
By CEO James Park own admission, the company failed to embrace smartwatches quickly and fully enough, and as it has so many times in the
past, Apple entered and dominated the space, leaving Fitbit reeling with an uncertain future.
