Fitbit CEO James Park:

 We are confident this performance is not reflective of the value of our brand, market-leading platform, and company’s long-term potential. While we have experienced softer-than-expected holiday demand for trackers in our most mature markets, especially during Black Friday, we have continued to grow rapidly in select markets like EMEA, where revenue grew 58 percent during the fourth quarter. 

Are they actually confident? Of course as CEO of the company, Park will cherrypick positive information about the company but as today’s financial call noted, things are going anything but rosy for them. Matt Brian from Engadget reports about the financial challenges the wearable maker faces:

 Fitbit will lay off 110 employees, which equates to around 6 percent of its global workforce.

In the previous three months, Fitbit sold 6.5 million devices, which include trackers and smartwatches, earning the company around $580 million. However, the wearable maker expected revenues of between $725 million and $750 million, ensuring that its annual growth totalled 17 percent instead of the 25 percent target it had set last year. 

As Matt notes, Fitbit is throwing everything it can at wearables in hopes of competing with (really) Apple and (to a smaller degree) Samsung.

 In the last eight months alone, Fitbit has bought payment startup Coin, snapped up the technology assets of Pebble and acquired the hardware and software know-how of smartwatch maker Vector. There was even talk of it snapping up rival wearable maker Jawbone, but it apparently wasn’t prepared to meet the desired asking price. With three companies now under its umbrella, Fitbit may be ready to de-duplicate roles, which may cost it up to $4 million during this operating quarter. 

And that’s where Sony comes in. I’ve been saying this for months – Sony will not and SHOULD NOT get back into the wearable market. Though they never announced their exit, it’s been two years since we’ve seen new devices so it doesn’t seem out of the question to assume we won’t be seeing a surprise SmartWatch 4 reveal.

I wrote in July about the future of Android Wear and how differently Apple was approaching the same market:

 It’s not that I wouldn’t want one or don’t think they can bring meaningful innovations, but that unless Sony is able to commit to having them properly displayed and experienced in retail across the world with a magnitude of different bands (Apple for example has refreshed their band line up nearly every season with an array of new offerings), I’m not sure there is much of a future for the SmartWatch.

There is a reason most people don’t buy jewelry or even cars online – a big part of it is the exhilaration of the ring on one’s fingers or the feel of a leather sport steering wheel in one’s hands that needs to be experienced. If Sony and the other Android Wear partners can’t replicate that on a scale that reaches outside of the tech crowd and targets the average consumer who makeup a much bigger bulk of purchases than techies like you and I, can there be a future for Android Wear to have broad success? 

And there lies the crux of the problem for Sony. Fitbit is wearables and they’re everywhere. They market the hell out of their products, you find them in almost every retailer and almost every athlete (and I use that term in regards to anybody who plays a sport or goes to the game) knows about their products or has at least heard about them. Same is true for the general public, yet they are struggling. For Sony, wearables like the SmartBand and SmartWatch was just a “we need to be in this category” play with the hopes of something catching on. There was no true vision while for Apple, the Watch is a building block that’s deeply integrated with everything else they’re doing. As for Fitbit, that’s their entire company.

Sony is in neither camp and unable to compete with either mentality so how can they hope to succeed in that market? Easy. They can’t, and they know it.

In other news, SmartWatch 3 owners might be getting Android Wear 2.0 – or maybe not?