Fitbit

Products

Alongside its trackers, Fitbit offers a mobile app and website that can be used with or without the Fitbit Tracker, although owning one is recommended. Users have the ability to log their food, activities, and weight, to track over time and can set daily and weekly goals for themselves for steps, calories burned and consumed, and distance walked. The devices also come with a USB dongle, to sync data to the account via Fitbit Connect.

Health effects

In those who are overweight or obese, some evidence indicates that the use of wearable technology combined with standard behavioral weight loss intervention results in less weight loss after two years of use when compared to usual weight loss interventions. There was no evidence that the devices altered the amount that people exercised or their diet compared to control. It is unclear whether these devices affect the amount of physical activity children engage in.

Accuracy

A small 2014 study of eight fit band devices during a 69-minute workouts that included 13 different activities found the bands were at best "reasonably accurate", with the Fitbit Zip and Fitbit One scoring 10.1% and 10.4% error ratings, respectively.

A small 2015 study had participants wear multiple devices on their wrists and hips performing different walking/running speeds on a treadmill. Fitbit devices worn on the hip accurately measured steps taken within 1 step of 100% accuracy. Devices worn on the wrist, however, were off by an average of 11 steps per minute. When measuring the number of calories burned, Fitbit devices worn on the hip underestimated by an average of 6%, while devices worn on the wrist overestimated calories burned by 21%. Authors concluded that both the Fitbit One and Fitbit Flex devices reliably measured step counts and energy expenditure, with hip-based Fitbit devices being more accurate than wrist-based devices. These measurements did not address the question of health effects.

Recall

Fitbit, working with the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, recalled the Fitbit Force on February 20, 2014 because some users experienced allergic reactions to the materials used in the product. On March 12, 2014 the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) made the recall official. At that time it was revealed that There were 9,900 reports of skin irritation and 250 reports of blistering . The product is no longer for sale on Fitbit's website.

History

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Fitbit was founded on May 1, 2007 by James Park (CEO) and Eric Friedman (CTO). On May 7, 2015, Fitbit announced it had filed for IPO with a NYSE listing. The IPO was filed for $358 million. The company's stock began trading with the symbol "FIT" on June 18, 2015. After Fitbit's stocks fell more than 50% in 2016, CEO James Park announced in October that the company was undergoing a major transformation from what he called a "consumer electronics company" to a "digital healthcare company."

On December 7, 2016, Fitbit officially announced that they acquired assets from Pebble, including key personnel, as the company decided to stop producing wearable technology. The acquisition excludes Pebble's hardware products.

In January 2017, Fitbit acquired Romania-based smartwatch startup Vector Watch SRL for an undisclosed price.

Awards

Fitbit has won numerous awards, including runner-up at TechCrunch50 in 2008 and CES 2009 Innovation honoree and best in the Health & Wellness category. Most recently, Fitbit ranked 37 out of the 50 most innovative companies of 2016.

Privacy concerns

To use and setup the hardware, one has to create an account with Fitbit and agree to data collection, transfer and privacy rules.

Starting in June 2011, Fitbit was criticized for its website's default activity-sharing settings, which made users' manually-entered physical activities available for public viewing. All users had the option to make their physical activity information private, but some users were unaware that the information was public by default. One specific issue, which technology blogs made fun of, was that some users were including details about their sex lives in their daily exercise logs, and this information was, by default, publicly available. Fitbit responded to criticism by making all such data private by default and requesting that search engines remove indexed user profile pages from their databases.

The company's devices have also been used in criminal investigations; in one instance, a rape claim against an unnamed intruder was turned around to a criminal charge for false reports based on data from the claimant's Fitbit.