Health-focused wearable gizmos maker Fitbit (NYSE:FIT) is not about to get steamrollered by sector heavyweight Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), according to Morgan Stanley.
Fitbit’s shares, which floated in June at US$20 a throw, rose US$2.64 to US$34.52 on the back of a note from the investment bank that suggested there is room enough in the wearable devices market for both Fitbit and Apple.
Morgan Stanley upgraded Fitbit shares to ‘overweight’ from ‘equal weight’, noting that Fitibit had maintained its 21% share of the wearables market despite Apple making inroads with its much-hyped smartwatch.
Fitbit, which is in a legal dispute over trademarks with another fitness technology firm, the similarly named UK firm Fitbug (LON:FITB), is seeing increasing demand for its products, according to Morgan Stanley.
A market research survey published in July by AlphaWise indicated the proportion of people intending to buy a Fitbit product rose by two percentage points to 17%, while at the same time the proportion of respondents who already had a Fitbit product and who were intending to buy an Apple Watch fell by one-third to 20%.
Fitbit’s dearest product is still considerably cheaper than the cheapest Apple Watch, which does not seem to have captured the public’s imagination in the same way that other heavily publicized Apple products have.