On Wednesday, Fitbit Inc has finally launched its latest smartwatch, Versa 2, in which Amazon.com Inc’s voice assistant Alexa is added. Along with this, it also added online payments and music storage in order to give great competition to Apple Inc’s smartwatches.
“Fitbit Versa 2” Smartwatch With Amazon Alexa Launched
After this the shares of Fitbit also rose as much as 5.6% to $3.01. The company’s new Apple Watch competitor is all set to be available in stores on September 15 with the starting price of $200. Pre-orders for Versa 2 will start later in the day.
Last month, Fitbit cut its 2019 revenue forecast, hold responsible to the unsatisfactory sales of Versa Lite smartwatches, which was the cheaper version that lacked features like the ability to store music.
Fitbit has also struggled very much in order to gain a great position in the smartwatch category as Apple as well as Samsung have cornered a larger share of the market with more classy devices, while its leading share of the fitness tracking sector carries on to be chipped away by much cheaper offerings from China’s Huawei as well as Xiaomi among various others.
Previously this month, the Chief Executive Officer James Park said on an earnings call with analysts, “While Versa Lite received good present consumer reviews, we saw that consumers were willing to pay more for a smartwatch with additional features,”
Fitbit Versa 2 Specification Featutes
Along with supporting the Amazon Alexa voice assistant, Versa 2 also has some other amazing features.
Talking about Amazon Alexa voice assistant in Versa 2, it helps you to talk to to start workouts, check your schedule, as well as to control your smart home or respond to text messages on an Android phone. On the other hand, the Apple Watch has Siri, which can be used for the same functions.
Additional features of Versa 2 comprises of water resistance up to 50 meters, support for using the Versa 2 for making payments, 15+ exercise modes, female health tracking, on-device workouts as well as 24/7 heart-rate tracking. However, it doesn’t have its own GPS but on the other hand it can use your phone’s GPS for getting the location information.
The company has also separately launched Fitbit Premium, which will give its users modified coaching that comprises of health reports, workouts as well as sleep features at a cost of $9.99 per month, which will start from the September.
Versa 2 and Fitbit Premium are steps to upsell to its current base of 27 million users by adding some additional features, as per to Scott Searle from Roth Capital Partners.
He also added that Fitbit offers five days of battery life on an average in contradiction of Apple’s watches that only have a day of battery life and easily loses sleep data as it is charged overnight.
Previous week, it also signed a contract with the Singapore government in order to provide fitness trackers as well as its services in a health program it said might reach up to 1 million users.
