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Google Acquires Fitnesstracker Manufacturer Fitbit

In recent years, the wearables manufacturer Fitbit has achieved some notoriety and great success with comparatively simple fitness trackers. Now the company has been taken over by Google for 2.1 billion dollars. Google is thus entering the lucrative wearables market.

Fitbit attracted attention above all with comparatively cheap devices and became a well-known brand, especially among people with an affinity for fitness. The devices themselves were not only distinguished by their price, but also by their technical simplicity. In the highly competitive industry, Fitbit had a hard time with this offer, posting losses of USD 36 million in the last quarter. However, the total sales figures of 100 million devices speak for Fitbit. Quarterly sales of $313.6 million are also impressive, but below the company’s expectations.

Google has now been prepared to pay $2.1 billion for the company. The Internet company thus finds a comparatively easy entry into the wearables industry, in which it was previously not represented with its own devices, but with a system interface for precisely these. Google’s “Wear OS” is used on a large part of the wearables available on the market.

The acquisition undoubtedly opens up new opportunities for Google. Whether the company will use its new position to attack Apple remains to be seen. With its Apple Watch, the iPhone company currently holds a leading position in the wearables market.

Fitbit customers now have to live with the fact that their data will be collected by Google from now on. Although the company assured that it would not use them for advertising purposes, it is unclear to what extent this statement can be trusted.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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