Mar 06
With the release of version 3.1 of the Up’s companion smartphone app, Jawbone is really moving ahead in terms of crunching user data.
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Feb 13
As the wearable tech space hits a boiling point, Jawbone is pressing onward and upward with a new $250 million investment led by Rizvi Traverse Management on the horizon, according to a report.
The maker of the Up wristband, a fitness tracker that pairs to a user’s smartphone, is looking to secure the nine-digit round at a $3.3 billion valuation.
According to Re/Code, general partner Suhail Rizvi may join the Jawbone board as a part of the deal, which would put him in good company. Jawbone’s board members include Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Ben Horowitz, and superstar designer Yves Behar.
Jawbone’s growth has exploded alongside the ever-booming wearables vertical, but that’s not the only thing the company brings to the table.
Jawbone has been successfully offering Bluetooth products to consumers for years, including adorable little Jambox speaker systems and various Bluetooth headsets.
Thus far, Jawbone has raised more than $275 million in venture capital (not including this deal, which has yet to close), along with $100 million in debt and equity financing.
Nov 13
It’s kind of hard to believe, but Jawbone—a company that was built on Bluetooth—didn’t have a wireless radio in the first two iterations of its fitness tracker, the Jawbone UP
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Jun 12
It seems a week doesn’t go by without finding out about a malfunctioning Jawbone Up band. The wearable step tracking bracelet measures how much you move each day and how well you sleep.
It was relaunched late last year in the US, and came to Asia in March.
I have five people on my Up friends list (all with new bands less than two months old), and already four of them are facing issues. Some are saying their LED lights have stopped working, and one of their bands is not being able to track sleep anymore.
My own band coughed and died just two weeks after I purchased it from an Apple store in Hong Kong. It stopped being able to retain a charge, and its purported ten-day battery would go flat within half a day.
A Japanese user I met this week saw I was wearing one, and informed me that his stopped working as well after about a month.
This is not good.
The Up is currently in its second generation. The first was a fiasco. Shortly after a triumphant launch in 2011, users complained that the band wasn’t holding a charge, and the company was forced to issue a global refund.
It came back a year later, full of promise, but these anecdotal stories of woe keep popping up.
When I went to return my band, one of the sales staff at the International Finance Centre (IFC) Apple store in Hong Kong informed me that the store was running dry on supplies because it had sent back a large batch of devices back to Jawbone. This was prompted by numerous customer returns, she said.
A user in Singapore, Kimberly Mah, had a band that had battery issues as well. She wrote to Jawbone, but was informed that the company would not ship a replacement “due to international shipping regulations”. Jawbone said she should check with the retailer she bought the band from.
But when she went to the Challenger outlet at Funan Centre, the retailer was completely out of stock, saying new bands wouldn’t come in for at least another month. Could this be signs of technical issues with production at Jawbone?
A survey of the numerous PC stores at Funan Centre also showed that each had just one or two bands on the shelf, potentially indicating a supply issue. The Apple Singapore online store lists an 8- to 10-week wait for new bands, as well. Jawbone has a lot resting on this new product — it’s raised about $210 million so far from venture firms, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer joined its board a little over a month ago.
At the top of the supply chain, the company who brings in the bands to Singapore, Digital Hub, couldn’t help with a replacement either, because they too were out of stock.
Jawbone’s response to all of this is that it’s a supply problem due to the bands selling like hotcakes. “It’s one of our fastest-selling products in Jawbone history… we are working to keep up with the incredible demand,” said a spokesperson.
On any new technical issues, she simply said that the band is “entirely new, inside and out” with regard to its redesign after the first generation, and pointed me to the testing processes they put the bands through before they’re sent out of the warehouse.
One can only hope these claims hold true.
May 22
One of the early pioneers in the Quantified Self movement has quietly gone out of business. Zeo, a leading maker of hardware and software used by consumers to track sleep and improve their health, has not been operating since the end of last year. A trustee has nearly completed the sale of all company assets. Zeo has been very quiet about the news up until now. In fact, Zeo’s website is still up and doesn’t mention the news.
Zeo was founded by three students at Brown University who had a passion for using the science of sleep and technology to improve people’s lives. The company introduced its first product, the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, in June 2009.
The following week, the first article mentioning the term “Quantified Self” was published in Wired magazine. While the article didn’t mention Zeo, it did claim “a new culture of personal data was taking shape.” And that every facet of life from sleep to mood to pain was becoming trackable. “Even sleep – a challenge to self-track, obviously, since you’re unconscious – is yielding to the skill of the widget maker.”
In 2011, the widget maker Zeo introduced a mobile version to its Sleep Manager product line. By wearing a special headband, with sensors to measure electrical current, the Zeo could track different phases of sleep, such as Light, Deep and REM sleep, in addition to awake time. This data was then sent to an iPhone, iPod, or Android phone, and could be automatically uploaded to a personal and private online sleep database. This data along with some analytical tools could then be used to help improve your sleep and health.
What Went Wrong
Former CEO, Dave Dickinson, who lead the company for the past 5 years, tells TechCrunch the problem was not the brand or the product. In fact, the company was growing before it shut down.
Dickinson says the problem was the business model. “The business model is more important than the brand. Consumer health devices are a very capital-intensive business. You have to find enough money to address the consumer, funds to address the physicians, and also the retailers, and that’s up and above the device business having to fund inventory.”
Zeo had two business model options on the revenue side. Become a SAAS-like business with subscriptions and recurring revenue or make enough money from a customer who bought just one unit. But that was very difficult when the company started pricing its mobile product at $99, with ‘sub-optimal’ profit margins.
The Newton, Massachusetts-based company had raised more than $30 million over eight years. Dickinson says raising capital was not the problem.
Sleep Tracking As A Commodity
Another problem for Zeo was that sleep tracking became a commodity. Devices like the FitBit, lark, and Jawbone Up use an accelerometer to determine sleep and awake cycles, using wrist actigraphy. These products brand their products as sleep trackers just like Zeo.
Dickinson says Zeo had peer-reviewed scientific studies, including one published in the Journal of Sleep Research, showing his technology was 7/8th as accurate as data from the a sleep lab, considered to be the gold standard for measuring sleep. The study also says data from wrist actigraphy to measure tiny motions in devices are much less accurate. But that didn’t seem to matter for enough consumers.
The Competition
Dickinson says he admires what the Fitbit and others like it have done. Those devices are not limited to one health issue like sleep, which was another problem for Zeo. Those other products work for different health and wellness areas, such as the well established desire to lose weight and become physically fit. Consumers already spend billions of dollars to achieve those goals. And they are already educated and motivated to improve their weight and fitness.
Part of Zeo’s business model required it to educate the consumer on the importance of sleep and how sleep awareness and data can improve your health. Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post, our AOL sister site, has been a crusader on the importance of sleep to your health. But according to Dickinson, “sleep is still lagging behind as important to your wellness. So in that respect, Zeo was early in terms of its mission.”
The Product
I used the device for several months last year and thought it was amazing. While wearing the headband took some getting used to, for me and my wife, the data it revealed was eye-popping. In addition to learning that I wasn’t getting enough sleep, which I knew already, I learned about the different types of sleep I was getting.
Most nights, I would get a half hour to an hour of “Deep Sleep” (dark green in the chart below) after going to bed. This is the phase of sleep the helps you feel restored and refreshed.
I would also see several periods of REM sleep, important for overall mental health, mood, and the ability to retain knowledge. The bulk of my time asleep, like most people, was spent in “Light Sleep,” which is better than not sleeping but doesn’t do as much for my health as Deep or REM sleep.
I was able to see graphics like this on my iPhone in the morning.
Here’s a good night with a sleep score of 90 out of 100 and more than 8 hours of sleep.
And here’s a bad night, with a score of 47 with just 4 and a half hours of total sleep.
If I woke up in the morning during REM sleep, it was hard to get out of bed. If I didn’t get enough Deep Sleep, I didn’t feel I had a good night sleep.
Zeo claimed the real value of the program was I could get personalized online sleep coaching. But this required logging in to the website and entering more information about my sleep and other variables I wanted to track. If I could have entered the data right on my iPhone, I would have likely used it more. Since it required logging in on the website, it proved too much friction for me.
I also stopped wearing the headband after a while because it does feel a bit awkward. The former CEO says the company was aware the device was too invasive for some customers.
But if a less invasive sensor was made and it was easier to enter custom data and get actionable information, I would have used it every night.
What’s Next
Dickinson can’t comment on exactly what’s next for Zeo, after all the assets are sold. But he is hopeful that there may be an opportunity for the company to re-emerge in the future.
An article appeared in the MobiHealthNews in March, that reported the Better Business Bureau had listed Zeo as being “out of business” but with no official announcement by the company, the news hasn’t been widely known.
It is still possible to log-in to Zeo’s “My Sleep” site that contains your sleep data. An article on the Quantified Self website today tells users how they can download their data in case the site goes offline.
As word about Zeo’s status has spread, Dickinson says they have received tremendous support and inquires from all over the world from disappointed customers and sleep researchers who had planned to use the units for the research.
He wrote a post on the MobiHealthNews site last week that included some additional lessons learned. He concluded by writing “motivating behavioral change through data visualization can be very powerful, but it is more of an art than a science. We will need far more artists, user interface experts and psychologists to help make our data work harder to motivate better health.”
Apr 30
Jawbone is doing something a lot of developers will probably be interested in, by opening up the UP fitness tracking wristband as a platform play, with an open API coming soon. Jawbone’s new version 2.5 update for the iOS UP app allows you to integrate with IFTTT, MapMyFitness, Withings, Sleepio, Wello, RunKeeper, Notch.me, Maxwell Health, Lose It!, and MyFitnessPal.
The new integrations mean that data gathered from those apps and devices like the Withings Smart Body Analyzer can now be pulled into the UP app itself, and combined with information gathered from the Jawbone wristband to provide a more complete picture of a user’s health. The IFTTT integration can be used to help you create your own motivational alerts when you’ve been inactive for too long, or to brag when you’ve blown past your daily step count goal.
The information from the UP can also go out to some specific apps, providing them with data on your sleep patterns and daily movement activity. And this is just the start: Jawbone is starting things off with a few select partners, but after that it intends to open up the API for any developers interested in building Jawbone UP integration into their own apps.
“We are now unstoppable in terms of leadership in today’s market,” explained Hosain Rahman, Jawbone CEO. “The platform we see the API is the first step of that; a limited set of partners with unique experiences, but the whole experience is much deeper.”
Jawbone made its reputation on building Bluetooth products like stereo headsets and earpieces, but then moved into audio equipment like the Jawbone speakers and health monitoring devices like the UP. Other competitors in the space have already moved to open up third-party integrations, like the Nike+ Fuelband, which plugs into Path and Lose It! Jawbone’s platform plans are much broader and deeper than the ones of some of its competitors, however, according to Rahman.
“A lot of these platform announcements like API releases are more PR than they are actual real developers on a platform building value for users,” he said. “We spent a lot of time sitting with developers, looking at what they can enable, what their data structure was, how to pull their experience back into UP, how you really create robustness around them, how to build APIs that work dependably and how we can make sure users can get this stuff.”
This should open the door for a much more holistic picture of personal health, available across a wide range of devices. Individually, these devices have been doing well, but the real opportunity is when apps and hardware start working with one another. Jawbone is taking a great first step towards that end with this API release, but it’ll be interesting to see how the UP platform handles normalizing a huge volume of data from a wide variety of partners in a way that doesn’t overwhelm individual users.
Apr 30
Jawbone Up, an always on activity and sleep tracking bracelet, just became far more useful thanks to a new ability to work with many other fitness applications and devices. It dramatically improves Up’s ability to track things beyond simple movement …
Mar 19
Android users can now, finally, get Up. A new app makes the health tracker work with phones running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean.
Nov 13
Jawbone is popular for its Bluetooth mobile phone headsets. But the San Francisco-based company is expanding its business even more. Today, Jawbone is announcing UP, a wristband and app system that allows users to track their day-and-night activities. The UP wristband is outfitted with a sophisticated computer that is powered by a Lithium-ion polymer battery. The water-resistant wristband has dual LEDs, precision motion sensors, a vibrating motor for notifications, and a single push-button interface. Battery life can reportedly last up to 10 days and it fully charges in 80 minutes via USB.
And since it’s made from a hypoallergenic TPU rubber, it fits comfortably in the wrist. Using the UP app, users can tracking their sleeping time and setup a silent smart alarm via the Power Nap feature. Users can also display comprehensive information such as active vs. idle time, intensity of movement, total steps, distance, and calories burned. UP also tracks mood, food choices, and will even offer highly personalized insights. The UP wristband comes in small, medium, and large sizes and in eight different colors. It is now available at Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, and online for $129.99. Meanwhile, the UP for iOS app can be downloaded via iTunes. You can check out the app here.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Jawbone UP gets official, Jawbone Up wristband starts making its way to online stores,
Nov 13
Jawbone has given its life-tracking Up bracelet a second chance. The original was promising, but had a sky-high failure rate. The new band, Jawbone hopes, will fix the massive problems of the original, and deliver on its equally massive potential. More »
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