Pebble’s third Kickstarter ends with $12.8M raised, $7.5M less than last year

Smartwatch maker Pebble wrapped its third Kickstarter campaign today with $12,779,754 in preorders for the company’s upcoming products: the Pebble 2, the Time 2, a little Spotify streaming box, and a refresh to the Time Round line.

Pledges this year fell short of last year’s milestone of more than $20 million, but surpassed the company’s 2012 campaign, when it collected about $10 million.

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Let’s start with the obvious: Enthusiasm for new Pebble watches appears to have slipped. Pebble has a history of breaking its own records — as well as Kickstarter’s — and that didn’t happen this year. It took the company a mere 48 hours to surpass $10 million in preorders in February 2015. This time around, it took Pebble more than twice as long.

This doesn’t mean that Pebble is doomed. Maybe some Pebble fans are happy with the watches they own and plan to upgrade next year. Or maybe Pebble anticipated the level of interest it’s received and prepared for it? Who knows — we’ve reached out to the company for comment.

Despite competition from Apple, Google, and Fitbit, Pebble managed to sell more than 70,000 smartwatches and about 20,000 little streaming boxes — a totally new category for the company — during this past campaign. That remains a noteworthy feat for any startup challenging the wealthiest company on Earth. We’ll find out sooner than later if $12.8 million was enough to for Pebble to keep up the fight.

Update June 30: Later, Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky responded, saying “We’re thrilled at the success of our third campaign and are truly thankful for all the support we’ve received for our next vision of health-enabled smartwatches and the new Pebble Core platform.”