One of the more popular Kickstarter products, Pebble, revealed today that they have received over 190,000 pre-orders through their web store. That was after the successful Kickstarter campaign from last year. That means overall it’s had 275,000 pre-orders for the Pebble, which is slated to come to Best Buy very soon.
Pebble’s co-founder Eric Migicovsky spoke with TechCrunch and said that the company wanted to reveal the total order volume now as a follow-up to its Best Buy availability announcement. To provide some context around the challenges the startup has faced in terms of shipping products to backers. Migicovsky has also said that the response at Best Buy has been very good as well. The Pebble is already sold out at many Best Buy locations.
The first 6-10 months after the Kickstarter campaign was over, the focus was all on shipping. Migicovsky said it wasnt a priority, but it was the priority. The startup is now getting to a point where it can change its focus to start working towards accomplishing its longer term goals as a company. That includes meeting demand and making sure everyone who pre-ordered a Pebble gets theirs.
Migicovsky said “our focus as a company is now shifting to supporting third-party developers” which is a major part of any platform. They already have a pretty active community around the Pebble SDK. The Co-founder says that fostering that will be where the startup shifts spending and development efforts.
While smartwatches aren’t yet “popular”, Pebble wasn’t the first smartwatch. In fact, Sony just announced their second one a few weeks ago. Not to mention many other manufacturers are working on getting their own smartwatch out there. If Pebble does well enough, they may see themselves getting bought by the likes of Google, or Apple fairly soon. Which isn’t always a bad thing.
How many of you have ordered a Pebble smartwatch? I’ve really thought about it, but haven’t taken the plunge yet.