Gadgetory

hi I'm glad we diverge we're here at CES 2014 and I'm joined by eric migicovsky CEO of pebble and you're here with your brand new pebble steel your second SmartWatch yeah we were here last year with our first watch and now we're here with pebble steel pebble steals an upgrade to the pebble it adds a lot of premium materials to the construction we're using stainless steel we're using corning gorilla glass but other its core it's still a pebble it talks to your iPhone or your Android phone and it brings you know the same notifications and apps and other features that you've come to expect from your from your pebble it's now just in a little bit more of an elegant or more stylish stylish watch case yeah and what drove the decision to move to co is the main construction component we actually borrowed a lot of the techniques and a lot of components from the classic watch making industry we even went overseas to find a factory that had experienced building sort of higher-end classic watches so we used stainless steel 316 which is a pretty a pretty high-class high quality material we also CNC mill every single pebble that comes off the line we make sure that all the seals are tight and all the dimensions are perfect partly because we've maintained the exact same waterproofing rating for the first pebble couple steals waterproof 25 atmospheres and one of the idea of keeping it waterproof kind of goes with our philosophy of making sure that pebble will mesh perfectly into your everyday life we've maintained all the other features like a five to seven day long battery life we've even made it a bit smaller and more compact reducing the border area around the display really because we wanted to make a watch that can get on to more people's wrists around the world and then once it's on the wrist then we can provide that smart functionality like the notifications and the apps and stuff like that so one of the reactions was from our editor in chief judge Topolsky who only saw pictures of the new pebble and he said that it was first mile watch they were considered buying and owning and actually feeling proud of so was that part of you drive behind the design to get those people who wouldn't consider Bionic SmartWatch to go for the pebble steel definitely I mean that was some of the feedback that we got right at the beginning of pebble people love the idea of when they started putting on their wrists when they did accessible when they did activities like swimming or biking or hiking we got people who said you know I love it but I'm just not going to be able to put it on when I go it for dinner or when I go to the office so with pebble steel we're hoping to be able to provide the same smart functionality but in it for people to people who just want to wear a more stylish watch or a different different design on their wrist you have OS 2.0 which are going to be releasing at the end of this month january 2014 that's around the time when you properly launch your app store and it's around the time that the public still will be arriving yeah it's kind of our forward push for 2014 I think that in 2014 pebble will represent more than just the hardware i think the the actual functionality will be driven by the apps that people create around the platform and up until this point it's been it's been a bit of a creative process to find apps for pebble we didn't have a centralized app repository so there's been a lot of community sponsored projects like my pebble faces and the pebble forums that have popped up to kind of fill the void there's people that are sharing apps on on facebook on reddit all over the internet with the pebble appstore developers now have a consolidated single point of contact where they can upload their apps and get their app distributed to over 300,000 people around the world but since you started shipping the original pebble they having plenty of other smartwatches showing up on the market Samsung suddenly they've come up with new iterations why do you think that is where does this popularity come from well I think other smartwatches in the market it's not it's not necessarily a new thing even before we launched pebble their work there was I think what are the two versions of the Sony SmartWatch there was this moto active so there's always been a lot of sort of movement in this market I think what's interesting to me is just the just the fact that most of the other people who are making products are taking a very different stance towards what the product is meant to do in your everyday life then pedal for us we're all about meshing with your everyday life so it's about making a product that doesn't force you to conform to the product it conforms to your own life and offers more of a companion to smart phone rather than a replacement and I think that's kind of our guiding principle right now both when we design pebble and pebble steel as well as the software that we make that will be something that we continue forward with were bought into that idea we believe that the best product on your wrist is one that works best for the circumstances that it's built for and the expanded functionality can be left on your phone so that's kind of our guiding principle and I think over time you'll see more and more more and more smart watches and wearables that that kind of I guess try to try to try to cram a lot of gear onto your wrist but at the end of the day that's just not exactly what we're trying to do that's beautiful that's it that's exactly the weather I feel and it's the thing that attracted me to the original bubble yeah it's and we're seeing that for our users as well and on top of that that informs our app and software decisions figuring out which components of the app we want to include on the watch it's kind of governed by that same principle like you don't want to have to write an email or answer an email or anything on your wrist you might want to do a quick quick response or it can reply but you know there's quite a division of labor between what's sitting in your pocket or in your bag and what's on your body so outside of the iphone and android devices what about Windows Phone and other mobile platforms we've been looking at them I mean we have some avid users within the Office of these other platforms as well for us it's kind of its kind of priorities thing we have two major platforms to tackle already and providing excellent functionality to both iOS and Android users is still our prime our prime goal we're exploring it there's actually a lot of people who have started developing third-party pebble apps or both windows phone as well as blackberry 10 we've tried them all and they're pretty awesome we're supporting people where we can helping publish more parts of our API I think that as a company will probably continue focusing on iOS and Android but I think we're going to try to do our part to the community and make more and more pieces of the pebble API open source so that people can interact with couple when they need to and just to speak about the future there are key queries that we have our Korean intern was interested about other languages you support for other languages whether you might be considering that yeah it's it's that we get on a daily basis it's also a problem that we've been thinking about a lot how do you how do you build expanded language functionality into such a small and portable device like pebble it's a problem that we're actively working on we don't have an ETA or anything like that that we can announce but it's actively one of our top top requested features right now offering expanded language support an affinia goes hand in hand with that is expanded markets when we'll get some of this in Europe has the thing that I'm really wondering about well we've been shipping pebble worldwide from our website and it's kind of interesting we've actually gotten a massive amount of orders on our website from outside of the US I think we're close to around 50 50 right now orders that are coming from inside the u.s. to around the world I think it it it's cool like were we're pushing pushing forward on international compatibility but I think that even today it's quite an accessible product that people can pick up in fact with pebble steel we're offering free worldwide career so anyone who in the world can buy a pebble for 249 dollars with free shipping from January 28 well they can promote it now exactly and then get it on january 28 all right thank you very much we timer ex-wife appreciate it