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Wearable technology open platform is now Pebble’s strategy

| April 24, 2014

The company is in direct competition with some of the largest tech players in the world.

Pebble has revealed, by way of its CEO, 27 year old Eric Migicovsky, that it is focusing on a new open wearable technology platform for its smartwatch, setting it in direct competition with some of the largest companies in the world, including Google and Apple.

Migicovsky was an Innovation Summit keynote speaker and discussed the smartwatch and its future.

This mobile technology has already been making considerable headlines after the smartwatch brought in $10.2 million through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that was held over thirty days in May 2012. The Palo Alto, California team of 10 employees has since sold tens of thousands of these devices and has carved out a considerable part of this rapidly growing marketplace.

In 2014, alone, there were 400,000 Pebble smartwatch wearable devices sold to consumers.

This year, Pebble anticipates 800,000 smartwatch sales, twice what it achieved last year. The company is now employing 81 people, with 50 at its headquarters in Palo Alto, and the remainder in other locations around the globe.Wearable Technology - Strategy

The Pebble app store was unveiled earlier this year and now includes 2,500 applications for the brand’s smartwatches. This is a major leap forward from a year ago, when the mobile device functions were limited to incoming call and text alerts. The company has recognized the vital importance of the applications and the ecosystem around those mobile apps.

This has led the company to create a serious focus on its wearable technology platform and helping to make certain that it is “what we think is the best possible platform for wearable computing,” Said Migicovsky.

It is designed to be an open platform so that mobile app developers will be able to build upon it. This is a striking direction change for the smartwatch, which had not previously focused on applications. It is also a direct reflection of the company’s intentions to continually evolve and keep up with what this market – which remains in its infancy – wants. The platform itself is cloud enabled, but Migicovsky has explained that the apps use JavaScript coding.

Mobile commerce revenue increased by 168.3 percent last year

| April 24, 2014

A study in March 2014 has shown that income from smartphone based site visits on optimized sites has spiked.

According to the results of the analysis of mobile commerce data by Branding Brand, major retailers have seen a tremendous increase in the revenue that is generated by their sites that are optimized for smartphone users.

The data also showed that there has been considerable growth in smartphone visits and orders.

The leading mobile commerce platform’s analysis was released in the form of its own Index for March 2014. It revealed that major retailers are seeing an important increase in the traffic, orders, and revenue that is being generated over smartphones through websites that are optimized for those smaller screens. This data was a comparison between the figures that were being seen in March 2013 with those that were recorded last month.

Branding Brand issues its Mobile Commerce Index report on a monthly basis.

The most recent m-commerce report provided insight into the use of the channel by consumers and underscored trends across a stead client sample within a range of industries that included health and beauty, apparel, and home products. This report provides information from the most data available on commerce websites that are optimized specifically for smartphones in comparison to those sites that are not optimized and that receive traffic from both desktop computers and mobile devices.Mobile Commerce Revenue Increase

The Branding Brand Mobile Commerce Index revealed a number of different year over year comparisons for eighteen major retail clients that they tracked throughout the twelve months leading up to March 2014. They included the following comparison between March 2013 and March 2014:

• Smartphone visits rose from 10,003,472 to 20,129,855 – an increase of 101.2 percent.
• Smartphone based orders rose from 59,080 to 135,640 – an increase of 129.6 percent.
• Revenue from smartphone shopping grew from $5,630,325 to $15,106,324 – a rise of 168.3 percent.

At the same time that the progress was made over mobile commerce websites, the share of desktop visits decreased within that year by an estimated 21.1 percent. The co-founder and CEO of Branding Brand, Chris Mason, consumers are not only using their smartphones more for shopping, but also for purchasing.