Jawbone Allegedly Halts Fitness Tracker Production In U.S.

Wearables, like other sectors of the technology industry, are a competitive business. Fitness trackers tend to be the most competitive area of wearables, and while there are many different companies in the space that are all offering devices with similar and unique features, only a handful of names really stand out with consumers on a large scale, including Jawbone, Garmin, and perhaps the most popular, Fitbit. One of those three, Jawbone, is now reportedly halting their production on fitness trackers in the U.S. market, and in addition to ending production on all of its fitness trackers they’re said to have unloaded whatever remaining stock they had of what had already been made to an unknown third-party, suggesting that Jawbone has no plans to continue making or selling its fitness-related wearables in the future.

A different report claims that Jawbone is seeking to sell off its speaker business which is responsible for products such as the Jawbone Jambox line, a mostly high-priced and decent quality spread of Bluetooth-enabled wireless speakers with more than a few models in the collection. While this could seemingly spell much worse news for the company than just discontinuing their fitness tracker business, Jawbone is likely to stay afloat as the report states that selling off the remainder of already-produced fitness trackers, which include their three main models the Up2, Up3, and Up4, was a move that was intended to gain them the revenue they needed to keep the business going.

Jawbone has not had the easiest time selling their fitness trackers over the last five years since it entered the space, and it hasn’t been confirmed whether or not Jawbone will ever resume production of their UP trackers or any others. Low sales may not be the only thing that has cut into Jawbone’s revenue, though, as they recently lost a case against Fitbit, the current company who dominates the market for fitness trackers, over a proposed halt on sales of Fitbit’s trackers inside of the U.S. by way of injunction on their import into the country. Right now there is no confirmation from Jawbone on whether or not tracker production has stopped or if the speaker business is being sold off.