Fitbit to build its own app store ‘as soon as possible,’ a smartwatch in the works?

Fitbit’s been on the news a lot lately – from its acquisition of Pebble to all the nifty Community features coming soon to its apps. Now, the company CEO James Park has revealed that the company wants to launch its own app store “as soon as possible.” Why? It’s not entirely impossible that Fitbit is preparing a full-fledged smartwatch of its own.

In an interview at CES, Park explained the vast ways in which wearable applications could be used in conjunction with a future Fitbit device:

There are so many different applications [our partners] want to write… from fitness-related ones to pill reminder applications. And we don’t have the support in place for that right now, or any software infrastructure on our devices to run those apps.

The support would come partially from the assets acquired from Pebble as the wearable start-up did have around 14,000 third party apps in its smartwatch app store. The basic infrastructure is already there, and building on that to create a full-fledged app store would help the company in creating new partnerships with healthcare companies and corporations that use Fitbits.

Now the question is “Why would Fitbit want to create an app store as soon as possible when it doesn’t have ‘any software infrastructure on [its] devices’?” Well, common sense tells me that if there are no devices currently that can support Fitbit’s future app store, the company will probably have to create a device that can. That’s where the smartwatch rumor comes in: given Fitbit’s latest acquisition and given Park’s statement, it’s quite likely that the fitness company is preparing to launch a true smartwatch of its own. We are not talking about something like Fitbit Blaze; rather, a more advanced and more typical smartwatch not unlike Android Wear smartwatches. Although nothing is confirmed yet and we don’t know when the app store is launching, it looks like Fitbit has some big plans down the road.

Would you be interested in buying a Fitbit smartwatch with its own wearable app store? Let us know in the comments below!