[fencepost]

> This sound like typical post-acquihire PR bullshit.

Maybe, but of the major players in the smartwatch or not-quite-dumb fitness tracker markets Fitbit is notable in not supporting any kind of app/face ecosystem. Obviously there's a ton of stuff for the true "smartwatches" from Apple and the assorted Android Wear stuff, there's Garmin with ConnectIQ, the now-defunct Microsoft Band had an SDK for developing Tiles, and then there were Fitbit, Jawbone, whoever made those Bluetooth-connected bands that Aldi had one week, etc. with fitness trackers that have some predefined screens.

Purchasing the IP and hiring a bunch of the software developers from Pebble lets Fitbit probably cut 2 years off of the development timeframe for them to have devices with changeable apps and an ecosystem that lets them have third-party developers. They could undoubtedly get something out faster, but it'd be an immature product and would probably take them another year before it could really be considered good.

I fully expect to see a lot of the Pebble code to make it into Fitbit devices - probably not for a year or more unless they can do some things with the existing hardware, but a lot faster like this than by trying to staff up from elsewhere and develop it all in-house.