E*TRADE Generation Trader: FitBit's Position in Wearable Tech
FitBit is a pioneer in wearable technology. But the company has recently shifted its strategy amid competition from the Apple Watch, and as the wearable market has failed to really see mass adoption. Cheddar's Hope King and Brad Smith explore the company's performance using E*Trade's innovative platform.
Adult wearable technology users in the U.S. is expected to grow nearly 12 percent this year, according to eMarketer. In a survey conducted by Cheddar, 18 percent said they own a FitBit compared to 27 percent who've said they own an Apple Watch. 47 percent of those surveyed by Cheddar say they don't wear any wearable technology.
FitBit has had an up and down year, with shares ranging between $5 and $7 a share. Overall, shares are down 17 percent over the course of the past year. The company did introduce its first smartwatch in 2017, and is looking to directly compete against the Apple Watch at a similar price point. Shares also hit a 52-week high in December during the holiday shopping season.
FitBit reports fourth quarter earnings after the Closing Bell Monday. Analysts expect revenue of nearly $590 Million, and to break even in profit.
Dustyn Kim, Chief Revenue Officer at Artsy, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she says increasing demand helped push the online art marketplace to NFTs and outlines how her company is helping educate investors looking to learn more about digital assets.
Food technology startup Tender Food raised $12 million in a seed round led by Chris Sacca's Lowercarbon Capital. Tender says it specializes in creating alternative meats with an authentic texture and is on a mission to make alternative meats so delicious, nutritious, and affordable, that eating meat from animals will no longer make sense. Christophe Chantre, co-founder & CEO of Tender Food, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
With the number of Ukrainians being displaced due to the Russian invasion surging, two students from Harvard took it on themselves to develop a website to help connect potential hosts with refugees seeking housing. The co-founder of the website Ukraine Takes Shelter, Marco Burstein, joined Cheddar news to discuss working together with fellow freshman Avi Schiffmann to streamline the effort to aid Ukrainian refugees. "We basically worked for three days straight developing the website, and since then the response has been pretty incredible," Burstein said.
Image-sharing social media platform Pinterest is marking Women's History Month through its Pinterest Elevates program, designed to help grow 10 underrepresented businesses with monetary and strategic support. Alise Marshall, senior global lead for public affairs at Pinterest, joined Cheddar News to explain how the program is helping to uplift women and women of color with businesses of their own. “This was in response to issues that we saw happening in the community, and ways that we thought that we were uniquely positioned to respond," she said.
Twitter is pulling back its latest change after receiving major pushback from users. The feature pushed the user timeline experience onto a "home" feed that used individualized algorithms for displaying tweets rather than posting them in chronological order.
Cheddar catches up with Lior Keet, EY Emerging Technology Managing Director, at South by Southwest to discuss what's on the minds of today's tech leaders, and how IT can play a role in an organization's ESG agenda.
