Ironically, Eric Migicovsky, the man responsible for making the smartwatch cool before it was cool, is late to our meeting. When he connects a few minutes after me, he's laughing. “This shouldn’t happen! I make watches!”
It’s OK, he’s got a lot on his mind. In less than twenty four hours, Migicovsky will have done what no one else has been able to do. Pebble will have crowdfunded three major products and have had all three land in the top five most funded projects on Kickstarter. “People keep asking me when our next Kickstarter will be as soon as we finish one. They wonder if we can really build a product via crowdfunding. And all the buzz, all the talk, I think that, yeah, we’ve proved that you can.”
And it’s not just buzz for an gorgeously upgraded Pebble Time or Pebble Classic that’s got him excited. The surprise breakout for the Pebble Time 2 campaign has been the Pebble Core, the unassuming square wearable that could.
Who, me? (Image by Pebble)
“We have 22,000 preorders for the Core right now. Much better than we expected." As Eric talks about the Core, it’s obvious that he’s excited about it. His is the voice of someone who's found new passion for what they do. "We wanted to see what would happen if we put together a product that just focused on two or three things. Runners love Core, that was our narrowly focused audience. But once we added Alexa, people really started paying attention.”
That Alexa integration has been key. Being voice driven, the Core lets Pebble leverage Amazon’s APIs, something that wasn't possible with the text-based interface of the Time. With Alexa’s skills and features growing weekly, it’s not hard to see that Pebble’s little black box has a lot more potential than as just a music-streaming run computer.
“One thing I hadn’t considered was how the visually impaired could take advantage of the Core.” Eric continues. “A woman came up to me and was telling me about how she had developed all kinds of Alexa skills for her blind mother. Using an Amazon Echo is easiest for her since it's voice-driven. But as soon as she leaves the house, that all goes away, and she has to depend on a touchscreen device with accessibility features. Now with the Core, that can open things right back up. She can have the Alexa skills she relies on anywhere she goes.”
Eric also talked about using a Core in his car to handle all in-vehicle entertainment. He’s talked to people that want to use them in their boats to aggregate all their sensor readouts. As he shares stories about what people plan to do with their Core, it becomes clear that Pebble's nascent wearable may look simple; but has an enormous amount of flexibility and untapped potential. Eric has to reign himself in, adding "We can't wait to see what everyone does with them." Despite focusing on making a really agile device for runners, it’s clear that the Core could be Pebble’s next breakout product.
Hardest decision is which color to choose... (Image by Pebble)
As far as the current breakout product? A visit to the Pebble Time 2 Kickstarter page makes it clear that the Time 2 is the runaway hit. The larger screen and included heart rate monitor (Migicovsky says they’re testing its performance against hyper-accurate chest-strap HRMs, a very high bar) make the Time 2 the best smartwatch that Pebble has ever produced. And the multiple sold out Reward tiers make it clear that everyone else thinks so as well.
November ship dates are already sold out; but pre-orders for December are still up for grabs. After 10 PM today, Pacific time, prices will go up as the campaign ends and pre-orders shift over to the regular Pebble homepage. If you’re interested, now is the time to reserve a Time 2, a Pebble 2, one of the gorgeous Kickstarter Edition Time Rounds, or the Pebble Core - the wearable that has the potential to become the communicator device that Star Trek promised us. Welcome to the future.
