Fitbit already managed to ship over a million units of its Versa smartwatches, having announced the product milestone on Monday, some six weeks after its latest wearable became available for purchase. The company’s female health tracking service introduced alongside the Versa has already been utilized by more than 2.4 million individuals, the firm said as part of the same communication. The San Francisco-California-based electronics maker first made a name for itself with fitness trackers but is now transitioning to more feature-rich smartwatches as the smart band segment appears to be stagnating, having disclosed as much on several occasions since late 2017. The move to female-specific health tracking is meant to deliver an even more personalized wearable experience to a significant portion of Fitbit’s customer base and may also lead to the creation of the world’s largest female health database, Fitbit maintains.
The company is now also touting its Fitbit OS ecosystem as one of the fastest-growing such solutions on the planet, having revealed its software development kit already allowed over 18,000 third-party developers to join the platform, creating more than 900 clock faces and apps. The Versa, which starts at $199, has been met with a relatively positive response from both consumers and critics alike, being considered as one of the most accessible premium wearable experiences on the market.
Fitbit has yet to return to profit, having cut its losses by some $100 million last year, ending 2017 $45.5 million in the red. Its annual sales also dropped to 15.3 million, seven million down compared to 2016, with the company attributing that performance decline to the weakening demand for fitness trackers. The trend is what prompted Fitbit to refocus a significant portion of its resources to smartwatches, the product category that it sees as the next major growth generator in the wearable industry. The firm is expected to debut at least one new smartwatch model by the end of the year, possibly around the next holiday season.