it looks like Jawbone may be the next victim of Fitbit’s dominance in the fitness tracking market. According to a report from Tech Insider, Jawbone has ceased producing its UP fitness monitor line and is selling its inventory to a third party for resale.
In fact, if reports are anything to go by, that’s not the only division if Jawbone that’s in trouble — a report from Fortune says that Jawbone has put its speaker business up for sale too.
Jawbone currently sells the UP2, UP3, and UP4 fitness trackers, however it seems as though the company has been struggling to sell these devices and was forced to offload stock to a third party in order to keep its business afloat.
The news comes as something of a surprise, although it is true that Jawbone hasn’t released a flagship fitness tracker in a while now, and has largely struggled to keep a dominant position in the market against the likes of Fitbit, and more recently, Apple.
In January Jawbone raised a hefty $165 million in funding, after which the company said that it would focus on developing medical-grade fitness trackers. At the time the company was valued at $1.5 billion, half of the valuation it held in April 2015. Perhaps the latest news represents the companies shift away from consumer tech and towards medical tech.
Jawbone has also been having a tough time in the courts — it was sued by Flex (formerly Flextronics) for breach of contract, a lawsuit it has since settled. And it has also been battling with Fitbit, and suffered a small loss when a judge ruled that Jawbone had infringed on a Fitbit patent.
It’s important to remember that so far these reports are just that — reports. Jawbone has yet to make any official statement on its business direction.
Source: DigitalTrends
