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Pebble, the smartwatch that took Kickstarter by storm, is heading for mainstream retail by way of Best Buy. While that’s an undoubted success for the guys that make the Pebble watch, it leads to some potentially questioning times for those folks who are still waiting since backing the project early on, or who made an early pre-order. After all, does sending watches to Best Buy help those folks receive theirs any quicker?
Pebble will be available initially in black, and will be in stores from July 7. For anyone not so familiar, it connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth and provides a wrist mounted interface for such things as SMS messages, Email, incoming calls and the like. With an SDK available for developers, the possibilities open up further, and getting these onto more wrists should help grow the third-party ecosystem some.
But, there are still people waiting on their watches who backed the Kickstarter project, along with folks who made early pre-orders once Pebble was ready to go. I’m one of the second of those types of people. My order went in on January 9, and while I haven’t yet been charged (thankfully) I’ll have been waiting 7 months almost to the day when Best Buy start selling the Pebble. 7 months without any kind of update, any kind of potential timeline to receiving my watch. And, since I don’t live in the U.S, Best Buy isn’t an option.
So, if shipments haven’t been made to folks who wanted them a long time ago — presumably because there wasn’t enough stock to go around — is Pebble sending units to Best Buy going to help these people get theirs any quicker? As Jerry Hildenbrand over at Android Central points out:
While not being able to fill demand is a problem many companies would like to have, you never want to leave a bad impression on your early adopters.
I suppose that’s the ultimate question here, what kind of impression has been left with those people who pledged their faith, and their money some time ago. How many of you guys are early adopters and still waiting on receiving your Pebble watch? Or, maybe you managed to get one, eventually. Whatever your experience, I want to hear from you. Is it similar to mine?
Source: Engadget, Android Central
