Fitbit Offers Low-Cost Fitness Devices To Compete With Apple And Samsung

Fitbit is currently the second largest smartwatch vendor in the world after Apple. On Wednesday, they just launched a new smartwatch with the cheapest price to protect its current position in the smartwatch market.

The Fitbit's latest smartwatch is called the Versa Lite and its price is only $160, while its full version costs $200. It still provides most of the necessary features such as monitoring the user's fitness and heart rate. However, the ability to store music directly on the device is among several removed features.

According to data provided by Strategy Analytics, in 2018, Apple topped the list of smartwatch sales when 22.5 million units were sold. Ranked second on the list is Fitbit with 5.5 million units and followed closely in third place was Samsung with 5.3 million units sold. In terms of a quarterly basis, however, in the last quarter of last year, Samsung officially surpassed Fitbit.

The competition in the smartwatch market has become more stressful since Samsung and Apple introduced health monitoring features into their smartwatches. This is a key feature and makes Fitbit become popular. Last year, Apple equipped its smartwatch with ECG features. Samsung has equipped its Galaxy Active Watch with a blood pressure sensor on this year's version.

Realizing that competition is being pushed up, Fitbit has quickly launched more affordable products to attract customers who still hesitate to spend a lot of money on smartwatches. Fitbit HR has a heart rate monitor that costs only $100 and Ace 2 is used to track the activity of children aged 6 that costs $70.

Fitbit's two rivals, Apple and Samsung, offer smartwatch products that are more expensive. Samsung offers smartwatches with a starting price of $200. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch starts at $279.

James Park, Chief Executive of Fitbit, said in a conversation with the press that the company now has 28 million users. The company is trying to prove to investors that if they can store customer health and activity data on their tracking platform, they can keep and attract customers to use their products in the future.

According to IBES data provided by Refinitiv, Fitbit's average sales were expected in the first quarter to be $272.3 million. However, Fitbit predicts their first quarter numbers range from $250 million to $268 million, lower than analysts' expectations.