Jawbone Lays Off 60, 15% of Staff Globally, Closes NY Office | Hacker News Reader

Jawbone Lays Off 60, 15% of Staff Globally, Closes NY Office

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65 pointscgoodmac36 comments

My uninformed opinion is that Apple Watch will suck the middle out of the fitness tracking market, leaving room only for specialized players (Fitbit, Garmin) and the very low end (Xiomi).

Of course, Apple may not end up dominating watches. But their entry “mainstreamizes” the idea of a general-purpose device also being your fitness tracker, and once that idea takes hold, people will stop buying fitness trackers unless they have a very specific prosumer need.

Fitness trackers are going the way of music players, cameras, and mapping devices.

I would definitely agree with you in terms of the Apple Watch sucking out the competition in the fitness tracking market, but would you not say that Jawbone was in the same league as Fitbit?

The marketplace seems to think that Fitbit are a fitness tracking company, while Jawbone is an electronics company that happens to make fitness trackers alongside things like bluetooth speakers.

I personally always considered both as "BLE got popular but no one has figured out yet how to make a decent smartwatch" kind of devices.

As someone who has owned a Charge HR and an Apple Watch, I'd say the Charge / Charge HR / Surge qualify as decent smartwatches in a way that doesn't apply to Fitbit's lower-end or previous devices.

Apple sells at a totally different pricepoint which is way off mainstream. So at least atm. they are catering a different market. Also, smart watches on the market may just be too ugly (including Apple's). I think there's still a lot of opportunity to partner with a major watchmaker like Swatch which owns half of the world's watch brands but doesn't have a clue about the tech.

I think removing the term "watch" and braythwayt's sentiment holds. Doesn't the iPhone offer much of the pedometer features activity trackers offer? I am also uninformed and haven't read any sort of comparison. But I wonder if Apple users realize the features available in the health app?

The phone does not currently have the heart rate function, so it’s hard to turn it into a complete health product. You need a chest strap, or a hat with heart rate function, and now you’re back to a wearable accessory for the phone.

I’d guess the other way: What if Apple ends up putting a GPS and a phone in the watch? Then you buy an iPod Touch-like device as an accessory screen for the watch, instead of a watch as an accessory for the phone.

> What if Apple ends up putting a GPS and a phone in the watch?

Then I still won't be able to text, which is 90% of what most people do on a modern smartphone.

That and watch videos.

I wonder how many people would even notice if Apple removed the Phone app from the iPhone ...

Oh and I assume taking selfies with your wrist would be hard too. I tried to position my wrist like that right now and my elbow wasn't happy.

It’s technically possible to text on the Watch, but mostly you text back variations of “yes,” “no,” or “ttyl.”

Which is terrible. Unless you don’t want to text with someone, in which case you have an out: “I’d have replied to your question detail, but my hands were full and I could only reply on the watch."

If you don't want to text with someone you can always wait 3 weeks then text "Sorry, I fell asleep".

I should have replied earlier, but I feel asleep.

I recently discovered they parse out "x or y" statements made in received messages and then make x and y quick reply options. I imagine the intelligent reply suggestions will only improve in time (analyzing prior conversation formats to predict and suggest what you might normally say anyways).

Not to say it's a replacement for a real thought out response, but I send many texts as simple acknowledgments or quick decision making and a watch interface could simplify a fair amount of them.

One way people text from Apple Watch is by dictation (Siri). At present Apple Watch hands the audio stream to an iPhone, but some future version of the watch will likely have its own speech-to-text processing.

Siri actually hands it back to Apple’s servers, so the moment the watch has WiFi or LTE, it will have Siri independently of the phone.

I suggest it doesn’t matter whether Apple Watch 1.0 is too expensive, too ugly, too big, too heavy, or all of the above. I suggest that what it does is send a signal to the market that watches are just like phones.

Which means, that they will take over all the functions that hitherto required more portability than offered by a phone. Maybe Apple Watch 3.0 will do it. Maybe Pebble. Maybe Swatch. Maybe a company we haven’t heard of yet.

But the Watch establishes that single-purpose wearables have to be extremely specialized to survive. I conjecture this drives consumers towards “safe” choices, companies they perceive to have good potential to survive the shakeout. And behind the scenes, it does the same thing to companies.

So I agree that there’s opportunity to compete with Apple Watch. But I am bearish on dedicated fitness trackers.

I think your market segmentation is somewhat off. The fitness tracking part of Fitbit has just been utterly commoditized; every smartwatch now does all the steps and sleep tracking, too, so they've subsumed that functionality while Fitbits smartwatch offerings are inferior.

Meanwhile, Garmin produces actual fitness trackers for the sports market, with full on GPS integration and a wide range of sensor support for stuff like power meters. Fitbits only offering here was only released in 2015, the Fitbit surge, their only GPS capable watch. But frankly, the price point is way out there, it has no support for swimming (so really the only market segment left for them here are runners) and their software story around sports enthusiasts is just laughable. They have no fighting chance against someone like Garmin, who dominates this market.

I hate to be that guy, but they've taken $820m in funding to make Bluetooth speakers (now a commoditised market) and fitness trackers. I know hardware is expensive, and they've been pioneers, too, but that is SO MUCH money to only have some a handful of gizmos to show for it.

Apple paid $3.2B for Beats, so I'm guessing the VCs thought Jawbone might be 3-4x the value of Beats?

That's a very risky bet indeed.

I honestly find Jawbone products to be much higher quality products than Beats. Their design aesthetic seems to fit in with Apple more than Beats as well imo. I have a Big Jambox and while it isn't an audiophile's dream, the sound is pretty good and the battery life lasts forever. Its not bad as a speaker phone as well. Worth every dollar I paid for it. I'm surprised I don't see more advertisements for their products, that seems to be the way that beats got popular because it certainly isn't price or audio quality.

Edit: forgot to add the point of this comment, I wonder if there were ever talks of a buyout by Apple or if not why they weren't considered/didn't go through.

From What Went Wrong at Jawbone (https://www.theinformation.com/what-went-wrong-at-jawbone ; subscription only):

* Employee doubts (lack of direction, CEO frequently absent during fundraising, ex-CFO alleged that CEO misappropriated funds for personal use)

* Manufacturing troubles (low manufacturing yield due to unique design, high product return rates)

* PE firm Rizvi Traverse backed out of expected $175M funding round after first $25M payment

Anecdotally, the jawbone wristbands have been very unreliable among my friends, multiple devices failed within a year. Customer service has been great, they just ship you out a new one, no hassle. But you can't make that up in volume.

More details on issues with the UP:

> Instead of using a strap attached to a small pod containing the electronics, the hardware was placed throughout the length of the bendable wristband. Spreading the electronics out made the device look like a bracelet, which fit with Jawbone’s goal of making electronics that doubled as jewelry.

> That created problems in manufacturing. In initial manufacturing efforts, the device’s electronics were destroyed when hot rubber was injected into the mold. Over time, the process improved, but not enough to convince everyone that the device was ready to be shipped to consumers. When devices broke, it was difficult to decipher the reason because the electronics were encased in rubber.

Yup I got the Up24 and it worked great for two months before it broke down physically. They shipped me a new Up 2 but the design of it is just so weird that it doesn't work. Customer support is ok, but not the best. Wouldn't trust their tech in the future.

I've heard from a friend at fitbit that jawbone, Nike, and others all licensed their tech from some professor's company, whereas fitbit developed their own in house... And evidently the licensor didn't keep pace with tech, but also didn't allow innovation on top of the stack.

This is second hand hearsay, take it for what it's worth.

It sounds like you are talking about MotionX [1]

[1]: https://www.motionx.com/

Fitbit didnt exactly do everything in house. I know they contracted Christopher White, the other half of Elecia Whites embedded.fm podcast and consulting firm logicalelegance, to do embedded engineering for them.

I have a Garmin vivoactive smartwatch. It has a built-in gps, water proof and it can track my biking, swimming, running and others. The battery comes for a week in one charge.

Compared to other players, Fitbit and garmin can hold their territories against Apple Watch. Garmin is also a debt free company with lot of cash in hand. Their dividend yield is 5.2%.

What is this thing #.jgiw2z:ikKk in the URL?

Referrer code maybe?

Yeah, it's a fragment identifier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_identifier) used to track shares/referrals.

Its a shame. Wish there were alternatives that worked for me.

Nothing else in the market has a comparable "Smart Alarm" like the Jawbone UP devices.

The new Microsoft Band has a smart alarm function that on paper sounds an awful lot like the Jawbone UP's. Having never seen the latter in person, I can't say if they're identical. But it could be worth looking into if that's a killer feature for you.

Yeah, I did consider that. However the price makes me wanna handle it with extra care. Would be worried about getting the screen scratched when I sleep wearing it.

so distorted headline..doesn't say how many employees they have, 15% staff Globally is part of 60?

15% = 60

100% ~ 400

So global workforce was 400. 15% equals to 60 employees.

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