Company acquisitions are pretty common, especially in the tech sector, and they can happen for all sorts of reasons. The bigger company wants the talent, like many of Google's purchases, or they want to bring the platform under their own management, like Facebook's Instagram and WhatsApp buyout. Sometimes the smaller company's features and technology simply gets folded into another product, like Songza into Google Play Music.
The next company in line to be swallowed by a bigger fish looks like Pebble, one of the first smartwatch manufacturers. Rumor has it that Fitbit is lining up a purchase and is currently in talks to bring the smartwatch company under the wing of one of the most popular fitness trackers on the planet.
If (and that's still a pretty big if) the purchase goes through, there's no telling what to expect. We might see a Pebble-esque operating system make its way to some of Fitbit's larger offerings like the Blaze or Surge, or we might see the Pebble live on alongside the other Fitbit models. The Pebble family could even replace some of Fitbit's pseudo smartwatches like the Blaze.
We might also see the Pebble line discontinue completely, taking a competitor out of the market.
It's too early to make any kind of guesses here, and the buyout might not even actually happen. If it does, you can definitely expect 2017 to be an interesting year for connected wearables and fitness trackers without one of its major players.
source: The Information
Actually FitBit has already said that the pebble line is going to be deleted completely. The Time 2 never came to be delivered when promised in November and is on permanent hold for now with no news coming from pebble about a new time line, probably because they are selling out and are not going into production. They are still offering refunds if you ask, which I did. This makes me too nervous as to whether I’ll ever get my $354 (two Pebble Time 2 watches) watches and also I don’t want to own an orphan with no more development and no warranty. I hope I have my money back in 14 days. If not, my credit card company said they’d refund my money anyway, so I’ll wait and see if the Time 2 ever makes it to market. I’ll be able to buy it at the same price as the Kickstarter price because they will be on sale due to the fact that pebble is a dead company. Fitbit is also a company in financial trouble, so buying out the competition may or may not help them. They may be like the sears/k-mart merger where both were having financial trouble and the merger didn’t help either of them. Expect Fitbit to go out of business next unless they can sell out to a larger company.