The Pebble Time smartwatch fundraising campaign on Kickstarter has set the bar with over $16.9 million raised across over 66,000 investors, simultaneously becoming the most funded Kickstarter campaign ever and sparking an online debate regarding the Palo Alto-based startup’s use of the crowdfunding platform.
Forbes reports that online discussions have questioned whether Pebble’s use of the Kickstarter website as an online storefront is in the spirit of the crowdfunding website. All the same, the company has managed to sell more than a million smartwatches before the release of the Apple Watch.
Pebble’s CEO Eric Migicovsky is a systems design engineer and founder of the Pebble Technology company behind the new hi-tech watches. His Twitter profile picture showed him in an interesting, fluffy-looking hat and his bio indicated that in addition to being Pebble’s founder, he also enjoys hats.
Devs, start your emulators! Our @Kickstarter update has all the colorful #PebbleTime deets. http://t.co/l4i1l5X0Pq pic.twitter.com/n6T9K2CgT8
— Pebble (@Pebble) February 26, 2015
This isn’t the first time Pebble has set a record on Kickstarter’s crowdfunding website, as they previously raked in more than $10 million in funding back in 2012, setting a record at the time. Christian Science Monitor notes in a report that back then, almost nobody had heard of, much less worn, the devices now commonly referred to as smartwatches.
This time around, the company is up against the likes of such tech giants as Sony, Samsung, LG and Apple which are, needless to say, serious competitors with substantial capital to fuel their endeavors.
The Pebble Time watch features a full-color screen employing e-ink technology reminiscent of the latest generation of Kindle e-readers by Amazon. As the e-ink screens use less power than other screen types, the device offers seven full days of battery life.
The new smartwatch is compatible with Android and Apple devices and it also comes with its own apps of which there are already more than 6,000.
With 18 days left in the fundraising campaign and already a whopping $16.98 million pledged by more than 66,000 backers, just how much money do you think the Pebble Time campaign is going to raise when it’s all said and done?
