Once upon a time, Intel wanted to establish itself as the go-to chipmaker for wearables. What's more, the company bought the pioneering fitness band company Basis -- its first consumer-facing business in a very long time. Now comes word that Intel has finally and officially killed its wearables business. In truth, it was a long time coming. Intel rarely talks about internal … [Read more...]
Misfit Moves to Full Display, Away from Intel/Google: CES
Misfit, one of the grand old brands in consumer wearables, had a couple of surprises at CES; one obvious, the other less so. The obvious one was the unveiling of its Vapor smartwatch, which abandons Misfit's signature design language. From the first, Misfits trackers have been small aluminum disks (or later, tubes) with only subtle LEDs as indicators and year-long battery … [Read more...]
Wearables Moving from Tracking Fitness to Fighting Chronic Disease
At a time of rumors that the fitness wearables market might be slackening, there is a continuing increase in the use of the technology in helping people with far more serious problems than getting their 10,000 steps. Intel and Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva, for example, have recently agreed to collaborate to develop a wearable to track disease progression in people with … [Read more...]
Managing Runway Stress with Style
British fashion designer Hussein Chalayan recently partnered with Intel to give the clothes in his new show that little added something—electronics that monitor stress levels. This can only have been for both companies to show off a little, especially for Intel to make a fashion case for its Curie module, an itty-bitty computer. Chalayan has previously commented that “Only … [Read more...]
Thalmic Labs, Makers of Myo, Raises $120M from Intel, Amazon
Thalmic Labs, which makes the Myo gesture-sending armband, has raised another $120 million from Intel Capital, Amazon Alexa Fund and others. VentureBeat notes that this is the first fundraising round since 2013, which yielded $20 million. Intel Capital led that round, too. The Myo band is a particularly interesting product. It fits around your forearm and senses -- and … [Read more...]
Intel Pulls Plug on Basis Fitness Tracker; Will Shut Down Hub at Year End
Intel appears to have thrown in the towel on its Basis fitness trackers, telling all users to send them back and saying it will turn off the server they need at the end of 2016. Basis was an early and fairly successful wearables startup, with a wrist device that was one of the first dedicated to serious athletes. Intel, which had never been in a consumer-facing business … [Read more...]
Intel Says to Stop Wearing the Basis Peak Watch
A posting on the website of Intel's Basis fitness tracker is advising customers to stop wearing the watch while an overheating problem is getting fixed. On June 13, Basis posted that a "small number" of users were experiencing overheating problems with the Peak and B1 trackers, to the extent that the device "in some cases caused discomfort, blistering or burns on … [Read more...]
Intel Quits Work on Wireless Power
Intel has stopped work on cordless charging, pulling its employees out of leadership positions in the Qualcomm-backed AirFuel Alliance, Forbes reports. It's been a very long time since Forbes was a reliable source of deep tech reporting, but this piece by Elise Ackerman is a remarkable exception. Ackerman gets very geeky not only about the considerable politics around … [Read more...]
Qualcomm Launches Purpose-Built Snapdragon Wear Chips
At Mobile World Congress a few months ago, Pankaj Kedia, Qualcomm's top exec for its wearables business, told us we should expect the company to ship many different variants on a single platform. Qualcomm is starting to pay off on that strategy, launching the Snapdragon Wear 1100 processor at the big Computex conference this week. The Wear 1100, Kedia told VentureBeat, is … [Read more...]
Intel vs Qualcomm Smartwatch Platform Battle Emerges
Intel and Google have been building a platform that enables smartwatch makers to build products with far less effort than they would need were they doing it from scratch. (The Fossil Group's smartwatch efforts owe a lot to the Intel/Google platform.) But Intel rival Qualcomm is now getting into the platform game, too. At this week's Baselworld watch show, Qualcomm, a leader … [Read more...]