Misfit, makers of popular smartphone-connected wearable fitness accessories, today announced the company is being acquired by watchmaker Fossil Group for $260 million, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Fossil plans to take the technology and integrate it into its traditional watch designs, according to the report:
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Misfit, the company co-founded by John Scully, this evening has officially taken the wraps off its Shine 2 wearable. The device offers a fully designed look with a handful of new functionalities, as well. The original Misfit Shine was revealed over two years ago, so today’s refresh is definitely welcomed as a lot has changed in the wearable industry since 2013.
Fitness device maker Misfit and swim-accessory expert Speedo are hitting the pool together this summer to create a special version of the fitness tracking Shine wearable made especially for swimmers. The Speedo Shine is enhanced for workouts in the pool thanks to “proprietary lap counting algorithms with industry-leading accuracy” that swimmers should appreciate. Data captured by Speedo Shine syncs up wirelessly with Misfit’s iPhone app over Bluetooth for evaluating workouts in the pool and hitting swim goals. And while the water resistant Apple Watch with non-leather bands plays nice with some water, Speedo Shine is made with swimmers in mind and waterproofed to 50 meters.
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Misfit, makers of the popular Flash and Shine wearables for fitness and sleep tracking, today launched a new iOS app that turns its Flash hardware into a remote control for a connected iPhone’s camera, music functions, and more.
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Two of the hottest product categories at this year’s CES were home automation and wearables, which Apple is now tackling with HomeKit and the Apple Watch. As has historically been the case, the price premiums Apple has set for its products have left plenty of room for more affordable alternatives. Misfit, a company co-founded by former Apple CEO John Sculley, is now competing in both categories: the just-released Bolt Wireless LED Smart Light Bulb ($50) joins a small collection of Bluetooth-controlled lights, while its late 2014 wearable fitness and sleep tracker Flash ($33-$50) is in the process of being upgraded to control Bolt.
Misfit’s pitch for Bolt is interesting. It’s billing the color-shifting bulb as producing “gallery-quality light,” and focusing its new Misfit Home app for iOS on creating “Lightscapes” — lighting scenarios including neutral bright white, warm sunrises and sunsets, candlelight, forest and volcanic tones, amongst other “scenes” where the color is set but the brightness is adjustable. When Bolt works, it’s a wonderful source of light, but as is common these days, some post-release tweaks will be needed to exploit its full potential…
Misfit, creators of fitness tracking devices and most recently sleep tracking-integrated smart light bulbs, is out today with their new workout app for the Apple Watch ahead of the new device’s release tomorrow. Misfit Minute has a slick look and feel and offers Apple Watch wearers the choice between 1, 4, or 7 minute workout sessions.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGL02_jRFBA&w=704&h=396]
Misfit, maker of the Flash and Shine wearable fitness trackers, today announced a collection of partnerships that will extend Flash’s functionality to include limited remote control of certain apps and home automation accessories. According to Misfit, Flash — a coin-shaped accessory with an integrated accelerometer, button and small lights — will be able to work as a wireless on/off switch in the following situations:
Misfit says that the features are coming to Flash in March, which should be shortly after the release of Misfit Bolt, a $50 light bulb capable of being wirelessly controlled by Flash. Additional partners will be announced in the future.
We saw Misfit introduce a unique, luxury version of its Shine fitness and sleep tracking wearable with Swarovski at CES yesterday, and today Misfit is launching Bolt—its first smart bulb. Misfit describes Bolt as ” a wirelessly connected color-changing light bulb that lets users personalize their home lighting.” Misfit points out that its Bolt connected light bulbs won’t require a hub and actually integrate with the company’s existing sleep tracking devices (Shine, Flash, Beddit) to gently wake you up with lighting during light sleep.
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While Apple is set to release its Watch sometime early this year, CES 2015 is already packed with smartwatches with a range of focuses including fitness, fashion, and utility. We already saw Withings show off its colorful and affordable Activité Pop smartwatch with 8 month battery life, and others including Misfit, Garmin, Magellan, First Alert and more also have something for your wrist to show off at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. Check out the latest below:
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In the face of new competition from Apple, smartwatch maker Pebble has released an update to the device’s firmware that enables all-new activity tracking features for health applications. To accompany this update, new Pebble apps from Jawbone and others that integrate with the health and fitness tracking features.
The app by Misfit will be capable of monitoring sleep and movement using the watch’s built-in sensors, while Jawbone’s “UP” watchface will be able to track similar data and sync back to the Jawbone UP service via a smartphone connection. Perhaps the most interesting application of these new features is the Swim.com application, which can “measure distance, pace, times, strokes, and efficiency while swimming” and later relay the data back to an app on a smartphone.
The new firmware also includes the ability to quickly launch your favorite apps using one of the device’s hardware buttons.
The update is available for the $99 Pebble or $199 Pebble Steel and can be downloaded through the Pebble iOS app.
Pebble Firmware 2.6 Release Notes
- NEW: Activity. Activity tracking apps (e.g. Jawbone, Misfit, Swim.com) for Pebble now work seamlessly in the background. View installed Activity apps and toggle preferences in the Pebble Settings menu. An Activity icon is visible within Pebble menus when a compatible app is installed and running.
- NEW: Quick Launch. Set shortcuts from a watchface to your favorite Pebble apps with a long press of the Up or Down buttons. Enable Quick Launch and set app shortcuts in the Pebble Settings menu.
- Battery icon is now persistent within Pebble menus.
- Select button once again dismisses notifications when paired with an Android device or iOS device on iOS 7 or lower. iOS 8 users get notificaion dismissal for both Pebble and the paired device when pressing Select.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
