Pebble's 2025 comeback: open-source PebbleOS, $149 Core 2 Duo sells out

Relaunches the Pebble smartwatch line — Core 2 Duo, Core Time 2, Round 2 — running open-source PebbleOS, sold only by preorder.

People still want a simple e-paper, button-driven watch with a 30-day battery — and a small founder-funded company can serve them without VC-fueled growth.

Founder-funded: Migicovsky sold Beeper to Automattic in 2024 and kept the new company his own, with no disclosed VC round (The Verge).

Migicovsky still wore his 2016 Pebble daily, worried it would eventually stop working. After selling Beeper to Automattic, he asked Google — which owned Pebble's code via Fitbit — to open-source PebbleOS. Google released the firmware on GitHub on 2025-01-27, and Migicovsky started a new company with a RePebble waitlist, planning watches that look, feel, and work like the old Pebbles.

Preorders opened 2025-03-18 for the $149 Core 2 Duo and $225 Core Time 2; the black Core 2 Duo sold out in days. Core Devices reacquired the Pebble trademark by mid-2025, restoring the original name. It built 200 beta units by June, shipped all Core 2 Duo preorders through July–August, and by early October had produced 2,960 white Pebble 2 Duo units, relaunching the companion app on iOS and Android with the old app catalog.

Still running and shipping: 19,000+ Pebble Time 2 units delivered by July 2026 (330 replaced for defects, ~1.7%), and production of 14,000 preordered Pebble Round 2 units began late July 2026.

An open-sourced operating system plus a surviving community (Rebble, an active subreddit, and a legacy app library) gave the relaunch a ready-made moat no new hardware startup could buy.

Selling only by preorder in limited batches let Core Devices fund production from customer money instead of VC, directly reversing what Migicovsky says broke Pebble 1.0.

The bet was contrarian against the whole category: no AI gimmicks, no health sensors, no retail launch — just e-paper, buttons, and battery at $149–$225.

Legacy users kept the brand alive for nearly a decade, so the comeback was demand-pulled rather than supply-pushed.

A niche product can be relaunched cheaply when its core asset — the OS and its community — is freed; staying deliberately small and preorder-funded can be the moat, not the failure.

As of early September 2026 the line is shipping: more than 19,000 Pebble Time 2 units had been delivered by mid-July 2026 (Core Devices replaced 330 defective units, about 1.7%), and production of the 14,000-unit Pebble Round 2 run started in the last week of July. The iOS/Android companion app carries over 2,000 apps and 10,000 watch faces and also works with original Pebble Time and Pebble 2 hardware. The company remains preorder-only with no retail launch and no disclosed VC round.