Jawbone Lays Off 60, 15% Of Staff Globally, Closes NY Office
Some difficult news this week for Jawbone, maker of fitness trackers, speakers and Bluetooth headsets. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company yesterday laid off around 60 employees, or 15% of staff.
Context & Ripple Effects
This November 2015 restructuring is the opening move in Jawbone's decline arc: the 15% cut and New York office closure came while the company was still shipping fitness trackers, speakers and headsets. Within months it had stopped making its UP trackers entirely, selling remaining inventory to a reseller at a discount to raise cash.
By mid-2017 the endpoint arrived with reports that Jawbone would be liquidated outright as founder Hosain Rahman moved to his new startup, Jawbone Health Hub. The same pressure was hitting the category leader: Fitbit cut six percent of staff, about 110 jobs, after a disappointing Q4 with 6.5M devices sold.
First-order effects
- Around 60 Jawbone employees lose their jobs immediately and the New York office closes, cutting global headcount by 15% as the company shrinks its fixed cost base across three product lines.
Second-order effects
- The retrenchment foreshadows the deeper retreat: within roughly half a year Jawbone exits tracker manufacturing altogether, offloading inventory through a discounted reseller rather than continuing to compete on hardware.
- Rival Fitbit faces the same demand squeeze and follows with its own 110-person layoff, signaling that cost-cutting rather than growth hiring becomes the default posture for wearable makers.
Third-order effects
- Jawbone's endgame — liquidation of the hardware company while Rahman carries the brand's health focus into Jawbone Health Hub as a services business — points to standalone device makers either folding or reconstituting around software-and-services models.
- If the pattern holds across Jawbone and Fitbit's parallel cuts, the consumer-wearables market consolidates around fewer, better-capitalized players, squeezing out hardware-only challengers unable to fund sustained product cycles.
The trend: Standalone consumer-wearables hardware is giving way to health-focused services businesses, with layoffs at Jawbone and Fitbit marking the category's shift from growth spending to survival economics.