Fitbit is not promoting its merchandise in a number of nations spanning Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
The information, first spotted by Android Authority, was confirmed on two separate Fitbit support pages. The official record of confirmed nations affected consists of Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hong Kong, Hungary, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Thailand. Extra vaguely, the help pages say Fitbit will even cease promoting merchandise in “the broader Latin American nations.”
South Africa can be on the record, per an interview with South African publication TechCentral. Google, which completed its acquisition of Fitbit in early 2021, instructed the publication that it has determined to cease promoting each Fitbit and Nest merchandise in “choose nations” to “align our {hardware} portfolio to map nearer to Pixel’s regional availability.” We’ve reached out to Google and Fitbit for additional remark however didn’t instantly obtain a response.
Regardless of not making merchandise accessible in sure nations, Fitbit did say current prospects would nonetheless obtain help in the way in which of software program releases, safety updates, guarantee fulfillments, and buyer help. Regardless of that pledge, there was at the very least one inconvenient hurdle for Premium subscribers. Fitbit Premium auto-renewals stopped as of August eleventh in Asia and October twenty third in Europe. These affected got a free month of Premium earlier than being reverted again to the fundamental plan — although confusingly, Fitbit mentioned they might resubscribe to regain entry to Premium options.
All in all, that is one more rising ache within the Google-Fitbit integration. Fitbit has lengthy been a world model, despite the fact that it’s struggled since smartwatches started outpacing fitness trackers in reputation. You’d assume this might be a method for Google to keep up that international buyer base. Nonetheless, whether it is certainly the case that Google is making an attempt to scale down Fitbit to Pixel availability, it appears to be one other signal of which lineup it sees as main its wearable ambitions and sources. Given Pixel’s extra restricted international availability, it’s disappointing to see.