Pebble’s Founder Is Pushing the Anti-Apple Watch, and He Doesn’t Want You to Care

Eric Migicovsky, the founding father of Pebble, the once-defunct and since revived wearables firm (now known as Core Devices), is making his low-fi, low-stakes smartwatches for Eric Migicovsky—or, a minimum of, individuals who additionally simply need something however yet one more Apple Watch.

“Apple makes it incredibly difficult for third-party devices to interact with things like iMessage or Siri or any of the built-in features on iOS,” Migicovsky instructed Gizmodo in a freewheeling video interview. “And that sucks. That sucks for competition. That sucks for innovation. That sucks for price.”

Pebble isn’t just like the Apple Watch or Google Wear OS smartwatches you discover at this time. Its hacker-friendly wearables aren’t making an attempt to repair an trade; they’re simply another for folks—like Migicovsky—who need a long-lasting phone-connected wrist pc. The firm’s founder described the primary tenets of the Pebble’s design. They characteristic e-paper screens with barebones software program meant to deal with the minimal of what you anticipate—checking messages and notifications, largely (although the Pebble ecosystem is open sufficient that you could find or create your personal use case). They have bodily buttons and promise a protracted battery life. The purpose being, Migicovsky personally hates having to routinely take away his smartwatch to cost it.

Back at its peak in 2015, Migicovsky stated the unique Pebble had round 180 workers. Now his rebooted firm, made up of six employees, has launched or is making ready to begin delivery 4 merchandise in a single yr. The product lineup features a black and white Pebble 2 Duo, a shade e-paper Pebble Time 2, and an Index 01 good ring that’s primarily an AI recording gadget you slip over your finger. The good ring has a non-rechargeable battery that lasts for about two years as a result of Migicovsky despises the concept of getting to take it off to cost up. The fourth product is the Pebble Round 2, a sequel to the corporate’s authentic rounded smartwatch from a decade in the past, which is able to start delivery quickly.

Migicovsky, together with his laid-back Canadian perspective, stated he’s actually simply making a tool he would need to use. A “cool,” capital “G” gadget with out a locked-down ecosystem to restrict the consumer.

There are evidently sufficient individuals who scent what Pebble is cooking and need a style. Migicovsky wrote in a latest blog post that Pebble has shipped 13,600 Time 2 smartwatches and has bought simply 7,000 of its Index 01 good ring to this point, a naked fraction of the reported 11,000 preorders.

I strapped on the Pebble Round 2 at CES 2026, and it’s putting simply how a lot it will depend on minimalism. Unlike a Pebble Time 2, it doesn’t actually have a coronary heart price sensor. It tells the time, vibrates if you get a notification, tracks your steps and sleep, and allows you to skip calls with the assistance of bodily buttons alongside the aspect. Migicovsky is extra excited by how the wearable makes use of open-source software program, which means anybody could make their very own watch faces for others to obtain.

To perceive Migicovsky’s philosophy, we’ve got to go over the corporate’s winding historical past. Pebble began as a small startup in 2008 and located success with a Kickstarter for its authentic Pebble smartwatch in 2012. Over the subsequent few years, Pebble scaled up and pumped out a number of extra fashions. Its greatest risk got here in 2015 when Apple launched the Apple Watch, and Pebble determined to face the large tech monolith head-on with a rounded smartwatch.

“I went through the ringer with Pebble,” he stated. “We did it all. We grew a big team. We hired people. We were in distribution. We were at Best Buy. We were in too many places.”

But by 2016, Pebble was getting squeezed out by Apple and Google’s smartwatch platforms. Fitbit acquired the corporate in November of that yr. Pebble IP would change arms once more in 2021 when Google purchased Fitbit.

Migicovsky claims that he had reached out to former Fitbit CTO Eric Friedman, who on the time was Google’s VP of shopper well being analysis, about open-sourcing the Pebble OS. Google truly followed through in early 2025, and by the tip of the yr, Migicovsky said that the Pebble software program was “100% open source.”

Fast ahead to at this time—Migicovsky stated he constructed Core Devices together with his personal cash, someplace within the ballpark of $50,000 to $100,000 to get issues began. (He admittedly shouldn’t be precisely quick on money after promoting his earlier messaging app, Beeper, to Automattic.) What’s modified within the decade for the reason that Pebble’s authentic conception is extra the enterprise and fewer the expertise.

The low constancy is what could also be interesting about Pebble watches. You’ve heard of 30- or 20-year nostalgia cycles, however there appears to be a non-insignificant chunk of gadget customers at this time craving for gear that’s solely a decade outdated. Migicovsky described the early 2010s as an age when tech was “CES-driven,” and designers threw something on the wall to see what caught. There are extra folks retrofitting outdated {hardware}, like iPods or Blackberry telephones, now than in years previous, and that’s right down to the proliferation of gadget-obsessed folks (like Migicovsky) who are typically curious about watches like Pebble.

Today’s expertise provide chain has ballooned to some extent the place Migicovsky can bootstrap a startup-sized firm and ship boutique merchandise to individuals who assume like he does. He stated it provides him a freedom to make devices that he enjoys in a method that eschews his least-favorite components of the job as CEO—particularly coping with entrepreneurs.

That similar provide chain is being squeezed by reminiscence firms which have all shifted gears to supplying AI datacenter tasks as a substitute of shopper firms and startups. Migicovsky stated that there’s 32MB (that’s proper, megabytes) of flash reminiscence inside a Pebble smartwatch. The value of that reminiscence has elevated by 6x, in accordance with him. Even firms as massive as Apple, which have grasp command over components sourcing, are being instructed how a lot they need to pay, and there’s no room for negotiation. As a end result, each gadget is now dearer, and worth hikes—in some circumstances a number of ones—have change into a regarding norm.

Not to say U.S. tariffs inflicting havoc with delivery costs. The Pebble founder appears to be taking all of it in stride. Migicovsky hasn’t raised costs (a minimum of not but), as—in his personal phrases—any gadget that prices $300 makes it more durable to like that product. So in that vein, what’s subsequent? Migicovsky stated he and his crew iterated on a fifth product however in the end scrapped it. Whatever comes subsequent, wearable or not, it’s in all probability going to be one other open platform.

“I love the energy that comes from a community that’s hacking on something,” he stated. “An open platform like Pebble just breeds creativity.”