According to two employees (via 9to5Mac) some Best Buy stores in the United States will offer the Pebble smart watch beginning on Sunday.
The product, which carries an in-stock date of July 7th in the store's inventory system, appears to be limited to Best Buy's brick and mortar locations.
Additionally, the inventory system points to an in-stock date of July 7th, which is the upcoming Sunday. Best Buy typically rolls out specials and new products on Sundays, so this date makes sense. However, an in-stock date could also mean that Best Buy stores are scheduled to receive the product on that date, but sales will only begin a few days later.
First introduced via an enormously successful Kickstarter project, the Pebble smart watch features an e-paper display and integrates with a number of iOS apps thanks to an official SDK released earlier this year.
The popularity of Pebble and other similar devices has spurred multiple companies to look into producing their own smart watches. Apple is currently reported to be developing a smart watch called the "iWatch," while Microsoft, Google, and Samsung all have offerings of their own in the works.
The Pebble smart watch, which is available in an array of colors, sells for $150 on the official website. It is likely that Best Buy will offer similar pricing arrangements.
Update: Pebble is now listed as "Coming Soon" on Best Buy's public site.
Update 2: Pebble has officially announced the Best Buy partnership, with black Pebbles becoming available this Sunday, July 7 and red Pebbles appearing next month.
Top Rated Comments
As long as we are comparing the Pebble to non-existent products, how do we know for sure that the developers of the Pebble don't already have a 'Pebble 2' in the works that could be even better than the Kreyos? Point is, we don't, just as we don't know for certain that the Kreyos will actually see the light of day.
There are people that backed the Kickstarter project on the first day more than a year ago and opted for the color white (and even other colors that have been in production for quite a bit longer) that still don't have theirs. I've been waiting for a pre-order since mid-December and I understand your frustration, but there are people who have been waiting much longer and deserve Pebble's attention much more than Best Buy. They still have a list of about 100,000 pre-orders to fill, so I don't see why they feel like they can start selling to people who have never even heard of it before...
"pre-orders" that have yet to be filled. I wonder how they will be able to keep Best Buy supplied with watches.