Pebble Smartwatch Shipping To 500 Kickstarter Backers, Starting Today

The Pebble smartwatch will officially begun shipping today, at long last. After a record-shattering Kickstarter campaign, the tidal wave of demand for the device led to delays and production woes. Now, after announcing a hard shipping date at CES 2013 earlier this month, Pebble intends to deliver its little wonder timepiece.

Unfortunately, there are a few caveats.

According to a post on its blog, Pebble Technology admits to a few enduring “kinks and issues”. First, it aims to manufacture 2,400 Pebbles per day, but in the mean time the ol’ Pebble factory will be cranking out somewhere between 800 and 1,000 units.

The blog post also notes that due to some quirks in its manufacturing process, the first production run will be the black version of the Pebble (there’s also a cherry red, arctic white and orange “voter’s choice” version). And while the Pebble app hasn’t passed go in Apple’s App Store yet, the Android app will be live on January 24. The app will be able to push software updates and nifty stuff like alternate digital watch faces to the device.

All told, fewer than 500 Pebbles will ship out today. It’s a drop in the bucket for the gadget’s 68,929 Kickstarter backers – but at least we’ll be able to see if this whole smartwatch thing has legs.