“That’s about 25% of its total staff”.
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Pebble informed that the decision to lay-off employees has been taken as the company failed to raise capital in Silicon Valley. CEO Eric Migicovsky…blamed a chilly fundraising environment.
Migicovsky said that money was “pretty tight” those days, so the layoffs were necessary to trim costs.
“Migicovsky stated that his company is “…in this for the long haul. Pebble, through a partnership with Amazon, will also begin to sell its smartwatches in India next month. At the time, there were no compelling smartwatches on the market; but by the time Pebble launched its second generation watch a year ago, it was entering a much more crowded field. On Monday, Apple slashed its entry level Apple Watch by $50 as customers await the second-generation. He tells Tech Insider, “We want to be careful”. That could explain why Pebble is laying off 25% off its staff this week. He says that Pebble has a plan for the next five to 10 years at least. Contrast that with Apple’s smartwatch products, which most analysts think have topped 10 million as of 2015, in its first year.
Pebble itself placed discounts on a pair of its more popular Time smartwatches, taking the price of the Pebble Time Round from $250 to $200 and the Pebble Time from $200 to $150, to keep the company’s offerings at a competitive price. Pebble is also facing tough competition from Apple and other smartwatch manufacturers. [It] initially hoped to raise $100,000, but…its watch instantly hit a chord with early adopters.
But the biggest problem that all smartwatch vendors share is convincing consumers they need the device.
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Once considered the thing to have in the electronic world, interest seems to have waned a bit in recent months, with the devices seen as interesting, but not as essential as owning a smartphone.
