Should you buy a Fitbit or Pebble this Christmas?

With the announcement that Fitbit are lining themselves up to acquire smart watch maker Pebble, should you buy a fitness tracker this Christmas?

If you don't know who Fitbit or Pebble are, where have you been?

Pebble are the darling of Kickstarter. They've put themselves up for crowd funding no less than 3 times and, aside from Oculus, are the most successful start up on the planet.
Fitbit are the big name in fitness trackers, with products ranging from wearable wrist trackers, sleep monitors and scales.

It has been touted in the media that Fitbit will buy Pebble for their intellectual property and discard the rest of the business. This is a smart move for Fitbit, who obviously need to branch out from the limited market of fitness wearables. The easiest way for them to do this is to diversify themselves into the mainstream of app enabled smart watches to allow them to compete with iOS and Android.

So with Christmas only a few weeks away, should you consider buying or gifting a Pebble or Fitbit?

Well, I would say yes. Business acquisitions take a long time to finalise, so you're in no immediate danger of your device becoming obsolete over night. Having said that, I imagine that should the takeover go ahead, then as soon as Fitbit take control they will quickly abandon support for Pebble devices.

One thing is for certain, it will be interesting to see what Fitbit can do with Pebble OS and 2017 looks to be an interesting year for the wearable technology market.