Pebble was one of the earliest players in the smartwatch space, going from Kickstarter success story to shipping over 1 million devices in just under three years.

Being first doesn't guarantee success. Pebble now faces stiff competition in the smartwatch space from Samsung, LG, Motorola and soon Apple.

But as the world prepares for the launch of the Apple Watch, Pebble isn't standing still. The company has plans to release new hardware and software later this year.

We caught up with Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky to talk about Pebble 2015, the state of the wearable industry and the burgeoning smartwatch space.

The Pebble at age two: by the numbers

Although Pebble's Kickstarter campaign launched in 2012, the company started shipping its smartwatch in early 2013. Now, nearly two years into selling the product, Pebble is available online and at retail stores across the globe.

And despite the myriad of smartwatch competition, Pebble is still going strong. According to the NPD Group's Q4 2014 figures, Pebble accounted for 34% of the smartwatch market. That's just behind Samsung (36%) and far ahead of Motorola, who had 16% of the market.

As we said, the Pebble has sold one million devices as of Dec. 31, 2014. That's a big milestone, especially for a company that started on Kickstarter.

When it comes to apps, there are nearly 25,000 Pebble developers and over 6,000 apps and growing. Something on the order of 300,000 different watchfaces have been created with the Pebble Watchface Generator and Migicovsky cited a growing community of users who love to customize the Pebble with different bands and screen wraps.

"We didn't ever really focus on fashion," Migicovsky admits. "Fortunately, by choosing to use standard size bands for the original Pebble, a fashion-conscious ecosystem has built-up anyway."

Focus on software

Going into 2015 and looking at future products, Migicovsky says the goal is to focus on the software and the overall experience of what a smartwatch is. "We want software that lets you get more done with it becoming complex."

That can be difficult because for some users, the initial response to Pebble and its apps is to want to install as many things as possible. In practice, however, Migicovsky says that too many apps and too many options, overwhelm the user. That's a bad thing because if a user is overwhelmed, they are less likely to stay on the wrist.

Migicovsky says that one of the most important internal metrics Pebble uses is related to its user-retention rate. By that, Pebble means the number of users who buy a watch and are still using it on their wrists weeks or months later.

"We need to know if we can stay on your wrist," Migicovsky says. Ultimately, becoming part of a user's routine and staying on their wrist is what will open up Pebble to its next evolution. "We want to take what people are doing now smartwatches and take it to the extreme."

One area where Pebble is already working on being better is when it comes to helping users reply to notifications. The Pebble beta for Android allows users to reply to text messages or chats with canned responses or with emoji or emoticons.

This is smart. My favorite aspect of smartwatches are how it can help me triage my notifications. Even the ability to send a canned response or a quick emoji or emoticon set as a reply on my wrist would be great. You know, provided the user experience isn't as horrid as Will.i.am's Puls.

Big competition

The most immediate competition Pebble faces right now is from Google's Android Wear platform. The upcoming Apple Watch will be big competition too. Both Google and Apple have more money than Pebble — not to mention more resources to throw at their devices.

Still, part of what makes Pebble unique and different in the smartwatch space is that it is one of the only "mainstream" devices that works with both iOS and Android. Although it's true that Pebble won't ever achieve the sort of tightly-coupled integration that the Apple Watch will have with iOS or the influx of information Google Now offers Android Wear, there is still something to be said for a device agnostic wearable.

But it's not just smartwatches that are competing with Pebble. Increasingly, fitness trackers are starting to eat into the space too. The line between a tracker and a smartwatch was already blurry in 2014. It'll be even blurrier in 2015. To that end, Pebble can do its best to partner with health brands, connected device companies and work on supporting software for companies who sell sensors and smart home products.

Although Migicovsky touts the standard line of "being excited about the attention the Apple Watch will bring to wearables and smartwatches in general," I got the sense that he's worried about Cupertino's wrist companion. And really, how could anyone blame him. Everyone making a smartwatch has to be concerned about what the Apple Watch will mean for its business.

For Pebble, 2015 is about doubling down on software, building out its developer community and releasing new products.