Earlier this year during MWC 2015, Huawei unveiled their own fitness tracker in the form of the TalkBand B2, the successor to last year’s B1. The tracker itself is quite interesting as it is essentially a Bluetooth headset that docks into a cradle that can be worn on the wrist, thus turning it into a fitness tracker.
It also came with a monochrome touchscreen display that would show wearers their activity as well as sleeping patterns. It also connected with Huawei’s own companion app on iOS and Android devices. However it looks like thanks to Jawbone opening up its Up fitness tracking platform, starting from today the TalkBand B2 will be able to share its data with the Up app.
Unsurprisingly most OEMs tend to keep their platforms closed off and restrict the use of it to only their products, but it looks like Jawbone has decided to expand their market space by allowing third-party OEMs, such as Huawei, to send data to their Up platform which some users might prefer over the default fitness tracking software.
At the same time, this has led to speculation that Jawbone could be thinking about maybe releasing less devices in the future. Instead the company could remain in the fitness and wearable industry by offering up the Up platform to other OEMs who might not be able to create a companion app as well as Jawbone has. Of course this is just speculation but considering the numerous issues Jawbone had with trying to get the UP3 to start shipping, what do you guys think?
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