New Pebble hardware and UI this year after a million smartwatches shipped

If you worried that Pebble might be left behind as flashier Android Wear devices hit the market, don’t fret: the company recently hit a huge milestone and is talking about big plans for the future.

CEO Eric Migicovsky tells The Verge that Pebble shipped its one millionth smartwatch on 31 December, and more than half of its shipments came within the last nine months – so things are very much on the upswing.

No doubt, some of that momentum came from the price drops last autumn, which saw the entry-level model drop to $99 (R1,150), and the sleek Pebble Steel hit $199 (R2,300 – both overseas prices, of course). Pebble has also been improving its UI and adding features, and more and more people are taking the plunge into wearable tech on the whole.

And Pebble won’t be relying on its original devices for long. Migicovsky says the company has plans for new hardware in 2015, and that we’ll see it later in the year. But the more important update may be that of a planned software overhaul.

Migicovsky claims that the upcoming Pebble platform won’t be similar to Android Wear or the Apple Watch, and that you won’t interact with future Pebble devices the same way you do a smartphone. Apps will reportedly still be in the mix, but The Verge says they won’t be a primary focus anymore.

“We’ve found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch,” the CEO asserts. “It doesn’t look like what we have today, and it doesn’t look like what’s on your smartphone.”

Very intriguing, indeed. We look forward to seeing what Pebble has cooking up for its next-generation wearables.

Source: The Verge