Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman says the company is “still committed” to the wearables business, refuting recent reports that Jawbone is exiting the wearables business or going out of business altogether. In a blog post on the company’s website, Rahman denies recent media reports as “unequivocally false,” noting that the speculation appeared to come from “wrongful insinuations” made by “a particular digital publication,” and although the publication later made a correction, this was not done until after other media picked up on the news and spread it further. Rahman emphasizes that Jawbone “remains wholly committed to innovating in and building great wearables products” and has technology in the pipeline that they “look forward to sharing … with the world.”
In spite of Rahman’s optimistic comments, Jawbone has not been without its struggles in recent years, with TechCrunch reporting last fall that the company laid off 60 employees — amounting to 15 percent of its staff — across all areas of the business, closing down its New York marketing office and downsizing operations elsewhere. While a Jawbone spokesperson referred to this as part of a wider “streamlining” of the business, with no specific product areas being cut, a much more recent report in Fortune indicated that Jawbone has been looking for potential buyers for its Jambox wireless speaker business — a product area that Rahman conspicuously omitted from his statements today — so that it can focus entirely on its health and wearables product lines. The Fortune report also notes that Jawbone has been working with distributors to liquidate its remaining speakers in retail outlets. A report from Tech Insider last week — likely the “particular digital publication” that Rahman refers to — also stated that Jawbone was “slowing production” of its fitness trackers and selling off inventory to a third-party reseller to raise needed revenue to “keep the business going” amidst struggles to sell its three major fitness trackers, which the report now acknowledges may have led to speculation that Jawbone planned to exit the market entirely.
