Jawbone to launch more fitness wearables: UP3 with new sensors for $180, clip-on MOVE for $50
Exclusive: Jawbone To Broaden Wearables Lineup — Jawbone is the latest wearable company to try to go where Apple is not going, with plans for two new activity trackers aimed at the low and mid-tiers.
Context & Ripple Effects
Jawbone built its wearable business on a single product — the $100 Up band launched in 2011 — but by late 2014 it was racing to scale: it had opened the Up platform's API while seeking another $100 million in funding, on top of the $147M closed earlier that year at a $3.3B valuation. With Apple entering wearables from the premium end, Jawbone's answer is segmentation rather than head-on competition.
First-order effects
- Jawbone's lineup goes from one SKU to three price tiers overnight: the $50 clip-on MOVE chases first-time buyers, while the $180 UP3 with new sensors defends the mid-premium — both slots Apple's watch leaves open.
- Existing Up owners get a clearer upgrade path, but also a reason to wait, as the new-sensor UP3 implicitly dates the original band.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like Fitbit face pressure to match the tiered spread — cheap impulse-buy trackers alongside feature-rich flagships — compressing margins at the low end.
- The strategy proves fragile at the top: reviewers later judged the UP3 not worth its $180 price for adding little over cheaper bands, and Jawbone kept climbing the ladder anyway with the $199 NFC-enabled Up4 — signaling that hardware alone couldn't carry the premium.
Third-order effects
- If basic activity tracking keeps commoditizing at $50, wearable makers must move value up-stack — into payments (Up4's AmEx NFC), software, and health services — or cede the hardware layer to phone-platform owners like Apple.
- The episode foreshadows consolidation among single-lineup tracker vendors that can't fund multi-tier hardware plus a services roadmap.
The trend: Wearables are splitting into a tiered market where commodity trackers compete on price while premium players race to add services like payments before sensors alone stop justifying the markup.