Smartwatch believers set new record by pledging £13MILLION to Pebble Kickstarter campaign
PEBBLE'S latest smartwatch has set a new record on Kickstarter – by raising more than $20million.
Within just 50minutes of launching its second crowd-funded campaign – Pebble set the record for the fastest project to raise one million dollars.
Both watches ship with a colour e-paper display, water resistant design, a standard 22mm strap fitting
The popular month-long campaign closed this weekend as a total of 78,741 backers pledged to buy either the Pebble Time or the Pebble Time Steel.
Both watches ship with a colour e-paper display, water resistant design, a standard 22mm strap fitting and quick release mechanism.
The all-plastic Pebble Time carries a $199 price-tag and will be available in three colours.
The flagship stainless steel Pebble Time Steel retails at $299. It boasts a larger battery than the standard Time which the company claims will last up to ten days.
Pebble's Time and Time Steel mark the third hardware refresh for the company, which first shot to fame by crowd-funding more than $10million for its first watch back in 2012.
During its latest month-long campaign, Pebble sold a total of 95,906 watches.
This breaks down into 58,966 Pebble Time models and 36,940 premium Pebble Time Steel watches.
The campaign has raised and raised $20,338,986 (around £13,689,834) for the company.
However, crowd-funding website Kickstarter is set to collect more than $1million in fees (some £672,972) from the juggernaut campaign.
Stripe, the payment processor which replaced Amazon at the start of this year, which also collect more than $600,000 (around £403,754) in fees.
Will the Apple Watch really save you time?
Pebble claims the first Time units will ship in May. Time Steel watches will arrive with Kickstarter funders in July.
The original Pebble watch was a huge success for the small Californian company and has sold more than 400,000 units.
In comparison, analyst group Canalys has estimated that 720,000 Google-powered smartwatches shipped last year.
Apple announced details of its first wearable device, the Apple Watch, earlier this month.
Models start from $349 (or £299 in the UK) and will be available from April 24.
