Pebble Lineup-140930-B-870x400

There is no doubt that Pebble has been fairly successful in the smartwatch game, being one of the first in the current smartwatch revolution, but they’re certainly not the only game in town now. Google’s Android Wear and soon to be released Apple iWatch now competing against Pebble, and they’re now looking at changing their game to keep ahead of the competition.

In an interview with The Verge, Pebble CEO, Eric Migicovsky, stated that the company’s new software will be different to Google and Apple’s smart watches which tend to focus more on app paradigms.

“Weโ€™ve found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch,” Migicovsky said in the interview, pointing out that while apps will continue to exist on Pebble, they won’t be the main focus of the platform.

This news comes off a big year for Pebble, 2014 saw the launch of the Pebble Steel in January, and growing from 30 to over 100 staff including bringing on-board some of the webOS TV design team from LG, many of whom have been given the task to design and build the new interface platform, which Migicovsky said “It doesn’t look like what we have today, and it doesn’t look like what’s on your smartphone”.

Pebble has also gotten a lot of support from third-party developers, with third-party activity doubling since September. The third-party support has grown partly due to the fact that Pebble built and launched a web-based emulator last month which helped developers build and their test apps without needing to install any software on their computers.

The company has also advised that there is now 6,000 apps and watch faces available for Pebble, with nearly 25,000 developers contributing worldwide.

On hardware, Migicovsky wouldn’t be drawn with further details. He didn’t say if the company would be changing their current design of their watches, which mainly run inexpensive e-paper displays, so we will probably have to wait and see after any announcements about changes to the software before hardware is announced. However with their design now heading to two years old, then a hardware refresh is definitely expected to help cement their current marketshare and keep up with current and future rivals.

Source: The Verge.
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jay

I am looking forward to have the support in Chinese

Fred

Yeah, saw the interview, but his description didn’t really seem to illuminate at all. “…a new framework to use as an interaction model…” really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The only thing I could come up with is a gesture recognition interface using the accelerometers – “swish and flick” for dismissing a notification? As it stands getting rid of the hard 8 app limit and the demarcation between watchfaces and apps seems sensible, as does a less clunky usage of the apps – but if they stray too far then their existing apps stop being compatible, and with… Read more ยป