Pebble Smartwatch App Store Launches

Owners of the Pebble smartwatch can now download a variety of apps for the device following the completion of its very own App Store.

Tweets from the company over the weekend confirmed that the final touches were being added to the service, with the finished version set to go live today with over 500 apps initially on offer.

“The Pebble appstore will offer a centralised location for users to discover, manage, and install apps and watchfaces”, said a company statement.

Existing within the Pebble app on a users’ iOS or Android device, the store will allow users to find and download Pebble apps directly from their smartphone.  It will be first  introduced to the Pebble iOS app in an update that will start rolling out at 10am PST, with UK Pebble users seeing the update appear from 6pm GMT. The Android app is poised to launch soon, although no concrete release date is yet available.

Power on your wrist

The app store will group its offerings into categories for easy browsing, including Daily, Remotes, Games, Notifications, Tools & Utilities, and Fitness (pictured below). “We’re making it easier than ever to find your next favourite app for things like tracking your workout, managing your music, or controlling your thermostat”, the company said of the launch.

Pebble has signed deals to bet apps from Pandora, GoPro, iControl, Yelp, FourSquare, Mercedes-Benz and ESPN among others, on the watch soon.

Until now, users discovered apps and different displays for their device (called watchfaces) using third party resources. The company says that three million apps and watchfaces have already been downloaded so far using such tools, with that number now set to soar. However, the Pebble can only have a maximum of eight apps loaded at once, so users may have to make some hard decisions in their downloading.

Pebble is one of the major success stories from crowdfunding website Kickstarter, with its manufacturers raising over $10 million (£6.2m) in financial support from users, making it the most successful crowd-funding project in the website’s history. The device began shipping last week, but has already sold out due to high demand, with new Pebbles not available until “late February”.

The company originally unveiled the Pebble App Store at CES last month, alongside the Pebble Steel, a new, premium iteration of the device which will cost $249.

“We wanted to build something even more refined—cranking the style dial to 11,” the company said, “Pebble Steel takes everything you know and love about Pebble—the crystal clear ePaper display, weeklong battery life, and waterproof design—and wraps it a smaller, thinner package.”

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