The reaction to the announcement of the Pebble Time has been nothing short of amazing. Support has far exceeded the expected financial target and even amongst those who write for this site, a generally unexcitable bunch, there has been widespread enthusiasm and buzz (evident in the number of us who have supported the project). Initial rumours prior to the launch suggested that it would work on a variety of phone Os’s, but the official announcement was explicit in only referring to Android and iOS.
Yesterday details emerged that Microsoft were testing a notification app to support Pebble. The app, designed for internal testing purposes, can be found here. The screenshot above comes from a Microsoft made app designed to show Pebble that Windows Phone could support Pebble. Me and many other Windows Phone users got a little bit excited at the prospect of support arriving in some way shape or form. Then last night things escalated a little. Pebble high on their success on Kickstarter decided to do a Reddit AMA where Reddit users could ask them any questions they wanted. Needless to say hot off the back of the Windows Phone app rumours people starting asking questions about Windows Phone. Where the Head of developer relations at Pebble said the following.
Also about the same time last night Daniel Rubino from Windows Central wrote an article about the whole sorry situation, based on information gleaned from “People familiar with the situation” . To cut a long story short it seems that Pebble have been in talks with Microsoft for years about working out a partnership between the two companies and to release an app for Windows Phone. Apparently talks have broken down due to the Pebble CEOs negativity about the Microsoft platform, despite the involvement of the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Quite how much of this is true I’m not sure, but if that means we’ll never see official support for Windows Phone from Pebble it’s a sad day. I always felt that Windows Phone platform would offer Pebble potentially millions of customers worldwide just by adding Windows Phone support. Can Pebble really be that stupid not to realise? Does the Pebble CEO really not like Windows Phone that much? Is there something else unwritten going on here? Like playbacks from Apple or something crazy like that? Who knows, I for one will be asking them on Tuesday at MWC…..
Sources: WMPowerUser – Reddit – Windows Central