Fitbit has unveiled a fitness tracker and two smartwatches, including one that purports to help monitor users’ stress levels.
The Fitbit Sense, priced at $329, replaces the Ionic as the 13-year-old company’s most expensive smartwatch. It also is the first to measure electrodermal activity, or how well skin conducts electricity, which varies with sweating and can indicate stress. The feature is pending approval from health regulators.
Fitbit research scientist Samy Abdel-Ghaffar said a new stress score would help users decide whether to take on a fresh project or instead take a break, sleep early or meditate.
The company also launched the Versa 3 smartwatch, priced at $229 and upgraded from its predecessor to include a GPS sensor and phone-calling functionality; and the Inspire 2 activity tracker, running $100 with a tweaked design.
The devices ship in late September, with pre-orders available immediately.
Fitbit has lost wearables market share to Apple and others since going public five years ago. Fitbit last week said that a content subscription to stoke revenue growth has 500,000 paying users.
About 5 percent of wearables shipped last year globally came from Fitbit, behind leader Apple’s 32 percent share, according to tracker IDC.
Google agreed to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion last November. But competition regulators in the UK, United States and many other jurisdictions are weighing whether the acquisition would unfairly deepen Google’s data about users’ habits. Fitbit said the reviews may delay closing the deal to 2021.
Meanwhile, Google and Fitbit are partnering to expand their market presence. Sense and Versa 3 by late this year will allow users to communicate with the Google Assistant helper, similar to Fitbit’s existing integration with Amazon.com’s Alexa.
Fitbit’s market share declined 26.1 percent during the quarter as much of the company’s production was based in China, which faced supply issues for multiple weeks, according to the latest IDC report.
