Even with Big Tech themselves, once their own founders have moved on, a lot of the mojo is lost. They tend to buy up their competition rather than innovate, and drive, from the ground up.
It is just sad that many of these smaller start-ups get bought out, or smothered. Big Tech has got so big today, that they can also put any smaller company out of business by selling their own products at a loss, or they can leverage favourable deals with OEMs.
In the case of Pebble OS though, I’m not sure that we will see any dramatic innovation (yet) as it seems to be a philosophy of minimalism and long battery life rather. But as the community can contribute, we are likely to see some interesting 3rd party apps for it, and especially for platforms that have open APIs. Apart from telling the time, and heartrate monitoring, the other big thing I use my smartwatch for is my weekly shopping list.
The founder of Pebble had also founded Beeper, so it is clear he is pitched more at fulfilling real needs than selling lots of promises.
I still have my own original Pebble watch from way back, and when I last checked it, it was still working. So, I’ll be keeping an eye on this project going forward.
See https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/27/24352968/pebble-smartwatch-open-source-google-comeback