Fitbit is now not promoting its merchandise in a number of international locations spanning Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
The information, first noticed by Android Authority, was confirmed on two separate Fitbit assist pages. The official record of confirmed international locations affected contains 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 assist pages say Fitbit will even cease promoting merchandise in “the broader Latin American international locations.”
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, informed the publication that it has determined to cease promoting each Fitbit and Nest merchandise in “choose international locations” 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 now not making merchandise out there in sure international locations, Fitbit did say current prospects would nonetheless obtain assist in the way in which of software program releases, safety updates, guarantee fulfillments, and buyer assist. 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, regardless that it’s struggled since smartwatches began outpacing health trackers in reputation. You’d assume this could be a approach for Google to keep up that world 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 world availability, it’s disappointing to see.