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...]
Is a Fitbit Smartwatch Coming? Sure Looks Like It: CES
There was nothing explicit about Ftbit's plans at CES, but the dots were there to connect. Fitbit CEO James Park told The Verge at the conference that his company was building an app store, like the one for Pebble, the assets of which Fitbit bought a month earlier. The thing about Fitbit's product line is that there's no product for apps to run on, so Park's comment was … [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...]
Aricent Announces Kids’ Wearable Platform Based On Snapdragon Wear 1100 Chip
Yesterday, we had news that Qualcomm introduced a low-function chip for simple wearables. Today, we're seeing news about how it'll be used. Aricent announced at the big Computex show the ADAPT wearables platform for children, a reference design that will help companies quickly build products around Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip. That chip includes motion detectors as … [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...]
Whistle Dog Fitness Tracker Buys Canine GPS Company Tagg
When we wrote about the Whistle canine fitness tracker a year ago, we said "what this thing really needs is geofencing and geolocation." We met the folks from Tagg at CES earlier this month, saw their dog GPS collar with its geofencing and geolocation, and thought it might be a nice accompaniment for Whistle. Now comes word that we weren't the only ones who thought so: Whistle … [Read more...]