Google is pulling Fitbit out of South Africa in line with its decision not to sell consumer hardware products in the country, according to a TechCentral report. Its decision comes less than three years after Google completed its acquisition of the fitness tracker company. Fitbit wearables have been sold in South Africa since at least 2014.
According to a report by TechCentral, Google is withdrawing Fitbit from the South African market, a move occurring nearly three years after Google acquired the fitness tracker brand. Fitbit has been available in South Africa since 2014.
The Core Group, known primarily for distributing Apple products in South Africa, was responsible for importing and distributing Fitbit. The fitness tracker, known for its affordability, originated from Healthy Metrics Research, Inc. in March 2007 and was rebranded as Fitbit, Inc. in October of the same year.
Fitbit’s expansion included the purchase of Fitstar, a fitness coaching app company, for $17.8 million on March 5, 2015. Fitbit then went public on the New York Stock Exchange on June 18, 2015, securing $732 million. In May 2016, Fitbit acquired the payments company Coin, which led to the development of Fitbit Pay, discarding Coin’s smart credit card product in the process.
Fitbit Pay was introduced to South Africa in 2018, with FNB being the first bank to support the service through its Visa credit cards. Since then, five additional South African banks have adopted Fitbit Pay for Visa-based card transactions: Absa, Discovery Bank, Investec, Nedbank, and RMB Private Bank.
On December 7, 2016, Fitbit acquired the struggling smartwatch company Pebble, which had initially found success with sub-$200 smartwatches through Kickstarter. Despite a successful crowdfunding campaign in May 2016 for three new watch models, Pebble faced financial difficulties, leading to significant staff cuts and eventual failure.
Fitbit acquired Pebble’s software and intellectual property for $23 million, a sum that reportedly fell short of Pebble’s debts. The assets of Pebble, such as product inventory and server equipment, were sold off separately.
Following the Pebble acquisition, Fitbit bought Romanian smartwatch startup Vector Watch SRL on January 10, 2017. Later that year, Fitbit released the Ionic smartwatch, its first product built on Pebble’s software platform.
Google’s acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1 billion in cash was announced on November 1, 2019, and the transaction was finalized in January 2021 after extensive regulatory review. South Africa’s Competition Commission sanctioned the deal on December 22, 2020, attaching a detailed set of conditions.
South Africa is now among various countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America where Google has ceased selling Fitbit. The list in Europe includes Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. In Asia, Fitbit sales have ended in Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Google has also withdrawn Fitbit from Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
The company has said it is aligning its hardware portfolio to map closer to its Pixel smartphone’s regional availability. Google has never sold its Pixel smartphones in South Africa nor expressed any firm plans to launch them locally.
This didn’t prevent those who really wanted a Pixel smartphone (or Nexus before that), from importing one. They just wouldn’t receive any local support or warranty on the device.
Google assured that Fitbit and Nest products already sold in South Africa would continue to function and receive software support from the company. And it will also honor any warranties on units people already own.
