Fitbit has great popularity in the consumer market, despite its $200 Blaze smartwatch having been on the market for just a few weeks (though its fitness bands are rather commonplace at this point). Fitbit has said that Apple is approaching the smartwatch category incorrectly, but at the same time, is thinking about adding more features to its device lineup. In the latest news concerning the wearables manufacturer, Fitbit has acquired Coin, a smart payments company that once offered mobile payments in its products for customers.
Coin made the announcement to the Coin community a few days ago: "Today, we are pleased to announce that Coin's wearable payments platform has been acquired by Fitbit, the leader in the connected health and fitness category. The acquisition will include key personnel and intellectual property specific to Coin's wearables payment platform."
Fitbit CEO James Park celebrated the Coin acquisition at the company's own blog: "Coin has been one of the key innovators in advanced payment solutions. The inclusion of their payment technology into our offerings will further our strategy of making Fitbit products an indispensable part of people's lives."
It's interesting to see that Fitbit assumes Apple tries to throw too much into its own smartwatches, but the company behind that statement is now acquiring a mobile payments company in order to launch its own mobile payment plans on the wrist. Sure, it can be argued that Fitbit consumers may indeed use mobile payments when they're out and about, but Fitbit's surge in sales doesn't necessarily show that its consumer base has a great demand for mobile payments. It just goes to show that sometimes, companies talk in a negative light about their competitors because they're trying extremely hard to level the playing field.
