The purchase of Pebble by Fitbit has been a severe blow to all those users who in recent times had placed their trust in the company. In particular, I bet years ago on the company buying a Pebble Steel, a device that to this day and despite its limitations is still a model that works like the first day. Keep in mind that The Pebbles are based on the app store available through the apps that allow us to manage them. These stores are full of applications that allow us to expand the functions of the devices.
Third-party applications is a fundamental requirement for any device to be successful in the market and many were the developers who opted for Pebble, developers who have already begun to stop updating their applications, as they are destined to die sooner or later. Pebble just announced that for the next year, the company will continue to offer support to all those users They've trusted the company, including running the Pebble Store, but little else. It is very likely that before the end of next year, Fitbit will fully charge this store, leaving all users of these smarwatches without support and utility.
Fitbit will keep the app in the ecosystems where it is available (iOS and Android) as well as services throughout 2017. To be clear, Pebble devices are not going to become useless and unserviceable devices. All tools to develop applications for this ecosystem, as well as firmware updates, will continue to be available to all users.
Time will tell if Pebble can deliver on this announcement or if, on the contrary, when the sale is confirmed, Pebble will have to permanently lower the blind with all that this entails, services included.