Making the case for FitBit in the era of the Apple Watch

Last week, I wrote about how Pebble Time, a startup making smartwatches can survive and thrive in the era of the Apple Watch. In this post, I lay out my arguments for why FitBit can and hopefully will thrive in the same world.A little over two and a half years ago, I decided to start tracking my fitness activities and ponied up $90 for a FitBit One. The small USB dongle sized device changed my life. It made me think and revaluate every aspect of my daily life from how much I sat in front of the computer to how I worked on my garden. Needless to say, I am a big fan. I am currently using a FitBit Charge HR and love it. In addition to the fitness tracking, it does heart rate and sleep monitoring, shows me the time and date, and notifies me of incoming calls on my iPhone. The Apple Watch which just started taking pre-orders and will soon start to ship, does all that FitBit does (but for the sleep monitoring) and much more. Why then do I believe FitBit will continue to do well? Here are some reasons why.Popularity and PenetrationLast Thanksgiving, when I opened the very many Black Friday sales ad mailers and also the online posting for Black Friday sales, one thing stood out. The number of places offering FitBit had exploded. Pretty much every store I shop offers FitBit these days. And that talks to the impressive retail presence FitBit has built over the years. The Apple Watch is new and will be pretty much exclusive to Apple Stores for a while after which it will slowly make its way to Best Buy and maybe Target. FitBit's retail presence will be a big help when it starts competing against the expected popularity of the Apple Watch and the growing presence of Android Wear.SimplicityThe FitBit family of products are incredibly simple to setup and use. The most configuration time is to enable call notifications on your FitBit and the type of display for time and date. It works with iOS and Android and is good to go in about 10 minutes after you open the package. You can configure your FitBit account to track your data as much as you would like and throw in your goals and such but the basic setup is trivially simple. The experience is almost identical on iOS and Android with just UI differences to account for iOS8 and Android JellyBean/KeyLime Pie/Lollipop design sensibilities. Battery LifeThis is a big deal when it comes to a wearable. I can tell you first hand. I charge my FitBit Charge HR about once every 5 days. I think it could go a day longer but I hate to lose step count due to lack of battery. And I dont quite enjoy charging it every 5 days. Any device other than my smart phone which needs to be charged daily is one extra chore I would like to avoid if I can.It is not just about the process of charging. Often times, the very act of having to charge a non-essential device every day can make one stop using it. I am sure there are enough wearable users out there who stopped using it when battery ran out of when they left it plugged in somewhere in the house. It happens. The stickiness factor of non essential wearable devices reduces with how often it has to be away from the body.Most of the smart watches today- Apple's upcoming Watch and Android Wear devices offer between 12 and 18 hours on a single change and reasonable use. For folks seriously into fitness tracking, this is cumbersome.All the features you truly need todayStarting with the original Pebble and continuing with Android Wear and now to Apple Watch, smartwatches are all about doing as many things on your wearable as possible. And there is a lot of value to that. But until that vision is meaningfully realized without us being inundated with notifications every time someone sends a message or tweets at us, the idea would be to have something simple with just the core features. The FitBit Charge HR and Surge offer all of that in a simple package - long battery, call notifications, heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, GPS on device (Surge) and compatibility with iOS and Android. Based on my use of my FitBit over the past 2+ years, I think that is almost all that I need.My needs could change as truly value added services are available on the smart watch platforms. Payment is one. Apple Pay seems to work very well on the Apple Watch. But beyond that, not much is essential or compelling enough to sacrifice the benefits of a FitBit. Non-IntrusiveAs I alluded to in the previous section, notifications are a double edged sword when it comes to smart watches. Having notifications definitely helps when the messages are important and far and few. But having too many of these notifications makes it a chore. When ignored, there is a growing sense of pressure that there are messages to respond to. When frequently responded, the Watch becomes a time sink on its own, not to mention take a lot out of the battery.This will change. With more people using wearables, there will be optimized notifications customized for the platform and this will increase adoption of all the smartwatches as a whole. At that time, when they become non-instrusive and just fade into the background for the most part, their use will be at their best. AffordableThe FitBit Charge HR can be bought for $149 and the Surge can be bought at $250. This is less than the cheapest Apple Watch. It is unlikely that the Apple Watch prices will come down going by initial response. Android Wear products are in the ballpark for FitBit Surge pricing and it is possible that they could compete strongly if they offer similar fitness tracking in addition to meaningful notifications and features. Until then, the FitBit will do well.I would take a strong guess and say that FitBit is working on its own smart watch. But for now, their fitness trackers are excellent products for the money and will continue to be so for a while to come.