Pebble drops prices as smartwatch competition grows, adds new health and fitness features

Pebble may be feeling the heat of growing competition in the smartwatch space with the growing number of entries from heavyweights like Samsung and Apple.

The original Pebble price is dropping from $150 to $99, and the Pebble Steel is dropping from $249 to $199.

On the health and fitness front, Pebble made a few small announcements. A new Jawbone fitness app is now available on Pebble, for one.

The Misfit app for Pebble has been updated to enable continuous, round-the-clock activity tracking and sleep monitoring.

Swim.com is the first watch app that allows swimmers to measure distance, pace, times, strokes, and efficiency while swimming, then automatically sync this data with their phone and the cloud when they get back to the locker room.

Pebbles are available at Best Buy, Amazon, and AT&T now, but will soon become available at a few other retailers, including Fry’s, Sam’s Club, and Sprint stores, the company says.

Pebble also says it is opening its applications programming interface (API) to developers so that they can develop their own apps using the Pebble’s accelerometer, sensors, and other features.