Intel reportedly disbands wearables division as it focuses on AR
Intel has reportedly laid off the few employees working in its health wearables division, which includes fitness trackers and the Basis smartwatch, as the company refocuses on augmented reality.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, CNBC reports Intel eliminated its internal wearables group about two weeks ago as part of a transition away from health trackers to more current advanced technologies.
In 2014, Intel purchased smartwatch maker Basis to bolster its health-related product offerings. At the time, Intel had just released the Quark embedded processor and the Edison smart chip, both competitors to fitness-related components manufactured by segment leaders Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
AppleInsider went hands-on with a Basis device prior to Intel's acquisition of the company. The watch itself was well built, but more importantly integrated advanced sensors to detect heart rate, skin temperature and perspiration, to varying levels of accuracy.
The Basis purchase was followed by the 2015 acquisition of Recon, which designed and manufactured heads-up display hardware for action sports enthusiasts.
Despite the substantial investments, Intel appears to have cooled to the idea of marketing its own wearable devices.
Last November, a TechCrunch report in November claimed the company was stepping back from wearables. Intel refuted the report, saying it had "several products" in the works to accompany then-recent launches like the TAG Heuer Connected watch and Oakley Radar Pace smart eyewear.
But today, CNBC said Intel axed about 80 percent of the Basis group during the November timeframe. An unknown number of employees were offered jobs in other areas, though it is unknown whether those people stayed with the company.
Separate sources said Intel's New Technologies Group has turned its focus toward augmented reality solutions.
As noted in the report, Intel continues to advertise its wearables technology through a dedicated webpage, including partnerships with Tag Heuer, New Balance and Oakley. On the same page, the company promotes its Curie processor, billed as a "microcomputer" designed to accelerate the development of wearables and wearable technology.
If Intel has indeed moved on from wearables, it will be just the latest firm to abandon such devices amidst heated competition from market leaders Apple and Fitbit. Earlier this month, Jawbone, once a promising standout in the fitness band field, reportedly began the process of shuttering consumer operations.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, CNBC reports Intel eliminated its internal wearables group about two weeks ago as part of a transition away from health trackers to more current advanced technologies.
In 2014, Intel purchased smartwatch maker Basis to bolster its health-related product offerings. At the time, Intel had just released the Quark embedded processor and the Edison smart chip, both competitors to fitness-related components manufactured by segment leaders Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
AppleInsider went hands-on with a Basis device prior to Intel's acquisition of the company. The watch itself was well built, but more importantly integrated advanced sensors to detect heart rate, skin temperature and perspiration, to varying levels of accuracy.
The Basis purchase was followed by the 2015 acquisition of Recon, which designed and manufactured heads-up display hardware for action sports enthusiasts.
Despite the substantial investments, Intel appears to have cooled to the idea of marketing its own wearable devices.
Last November, a TechCrunch report in November claimed the company was stepping back from wearables. Intel refuted the report, saying it had "several products" in the works to accompany then-recent launches like the TAG Heuer Connected watch and Oakley Radar Pace smart eyewear.
But today, CNBC said Intel axed about 80 percent of the Basis group during the November timeframe. An unknown number of employees were offered jobs in other areas, though it is unknown whether those people stayed with the company.
Separate sources said Intel's New Technologies Group has turned its focus toward augmented reality solutions.
As noted in the report, Intel continues to advertise its wearables technology through a dedicated webpage, including partnerships with Tag Heuer, New Balance and Oakley. On the same page, the company promotes its Curie processor, billed as a "microcomputer" designed to accelerate the development of wearables and wearable technology.
If Intel has indeed moved on from wearables, it will be just the latest firm to abandon such devices amidst heated competition from market leaders Apple and Fitbit. Earlier this month, Jawbone, once a promising standout in the fitness band field, reportedly began the process of shuttering consumer operations.
Comments
Why will Apple glue the glass cover on a Basis?
Does that about cover it?
I was thinking, more like, "Chasing the Trend".
No one cares about what processors are in their products? Oh gee, maybe they should stop putting "Intel inside" stickers on computers. Feel free to ignore that Intel computers consistently outsell the AMD counterparts even though devices with AMD chips cost noticeably less. Or that customers who know even a little bit consistently prefer the i5 and i7 processor models over the i3, Bay Trail, Cherry Trail etc. models even though - again - the former costs much more. Or that Mac owners have been griping the past few years because recent Mac releases and refreshes haven't had the latest, greatest Intel processors.
And that is with PCs. In mobile - which granted is only applicable to the Android and the Windows (while it existed) world - people absolutely care about whether the CPU was from Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek or Intel. No one outside of South Korea pays top dollar for an Android phone unless it has a Qualcomm 800 series chip in it. MediaTek chips get avoided like the plague for all but the cheapest devices. And virtually no one bought devices with Intel chips at all despite the devices that featured them generally being cheaper (due to Intel subsidies) and performing nearly as well as Qualcomm 600 series chips and having other advantages as coming out with 64 bit chips faster than Qualcomm and MediaTek did AND Google doing their best to promote them among consumers and suppliers, mainly because a lot of the apps were designed for ARM chips and didn't run well (or at all) on x86 architecture. So, basically, everything that you said was false. Every. Single. Thing.
Incidentally, I have no idea why all of you are so gleeful about Intel's problems anyway. Still angry at them over the Wintel days? Still fighting last year's battles I guess. More like battles from 20-30 years ago. But seriously ... if Intel folds, who makes you guys' chips for Macs? I know that a lot of you want Apple to shift macOS to the Ax series, but that is really, truly a ridiculous idea for anyone who uses Macs for real work (programming, IT, CAD, video editing etc). The Ax series has only just now reached quad core where the Intel I-7 has up to 8. Apple could go to AMD ... but AMD made plenty of Windows PCs too, and would have made more than Intel did if it were up to consumers so what's the point there ... they're as "guilty" as Wintel. So who else is out there? Nvidia? TSMC? Samsung? Qualcomm? All of them are major suppliers for Android OEMs - making them as "guilty" as Intel, especially Nvidia and Samsung who manufacture and sell their own Android devices that compete directly with Apple devices - plus they are all primarily ARM shops who lack the expertise and manufacturing scale to make CPUs who can handle high performance - or even medium performance - macOS devices.
By the way ... soon this will no longer be that big of a deal FOR MICROSOFT AND WINDOWS. They have been working on getting Windows - both PC and server versions - to run on ARM for years. Windows 10 for ARM will debut in 2018 at the latest, and Windows 2016 Server has already been ported to ARM for cloud servers, and will in (relatively) short order be ported to ARM for regular servers. So 3 years from now, Apple will be more reliant on Intel than Microsoft. Windows professionals will be able to buy server-class ARM hardware and use them as PC workstations in CAD, gaming and other high performance purposes because they will be cheaper than Intel-based workstations that offer less performance. Don't believe me? Well, professionals who prefer Linux have been doing it for years. Ironically, Microsoft embracing ARM for Windows will increase this, as it will make Linux-based ARM hardware even cheaper and easier to find: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/20/microsoft_on_arm/
But hey, you keep rooting for Intel to fail just because they competed with Apple back in the 90s and 00s while totally ignoring that they are even more important to Apple now in the future - supplying CPUs for Macs and modems for iPhones and iPads - than they are to Microsoft. Intel could fold tomorrow and Microsoft would simply shift to AMD, on which its products have run for decades, while continuing to move to ARM (because Microsoft's eventual goal is to compete with Android on ARM, not compete with macOS because let's face it ... Microsoft won that war long ago as even now after an iOS-inspired boom in Mac purchases, Windows still has a 91% share of the PC market). Apple meanwhile would have to scramble to do a major technical redesign - because unlike Windows which is a general purpose OS like Android, macOS is designed only to run on Intel hardware just as iOS is only designed for Ax - as well as completely rework its supply chain.
Let go of the past. Intel's pain is not Apple's gain. Instead, the converse is true. Apple needs Intel to be strong and vital in order to be able to continue to devote the R&D into their CPUs, and be able to manufacture them at scale. The last thing that Apple needs is for Intel to be in a struggle for survival.
And, kudos to Intel - when they recalled all the product, they bought it all back. I ended up getting a check for about 500 USD for two used watches. Only a few months before, I had given a third one to a friend with heart trouble, and he got a check as well. Way to bow out without leaving consumers in the lurch - except that there's no good replacement for the things that BASIS did best in class, even today.
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/the-basis-b1-fitness-band-is-amazing-but-still-needs-polish/ ;
http://gizmodo.com/5992356/basis-b1-review-the-best-activity-tracker-despite-one-critical-flaw
It was good. I still miss it for some things.
Also, where is anybody "rooting for Intel to fail"? I haven't seen that in the comments above.
Bigly on words, high on emotion, short on background reading.
And to make things worse, you quoted the Register, which buys you as much credibility as quoting the Sun.
The biggest hole in your knowledge however, occurs here:
Microsoft won that war long ago as even now after an iOS-inspired boom in Mac purchases, Windows still has a 91% share of the PC market). Apple meanwhile would have to scramble to do a major technical redesign - because unlike Windows which is a general purpose OS like Android, macOS is designed only to run on Intel hardware just as iOS is only designed for Ax - as well as completely rework its supply chain.
Indeed, Microsoft won that war, and continues to enjoy the spoils of a rapidly shrinking market, but the rest of your post is fanciful at best.
Apple would have to scramble to do a major technical redesign. Apple is a past master at operating system porting. In fact a lot of the pain they put developers through is so that they can up stick sand move to a different operating system at the drop of a hat. They have ported MacOS from the PowerPc to Intel, and then used the same core code to build iOS which runs on their own ARM-based chip. The IT press was caught napping when Apple announced they announced they were abandoning. Now, no one in their right mind would bet against Apple having a MacOS/Ax project running in parallel for at least five years.
because unlike Windows which is a general purpose OS like Android, macOS is designed only to run on Intel hardware just as iOS is only designed for Ax. Again, nope. MacOS has spawned iOS, WatchOS, TvOS, and that FunnyTouchBarThingyOS. With the exception of Linux, it is probably the most general purpose OS on the market. It didn't start life on Intel hardware, and Apple is not going to make the mistake of being tied to Intel hardware (they learned their lesson with the PowerPC).
Apple fully expects Intel to continue struggling to lower power consumption and increase speed. Apple fully expects Intel to look for other areas of revenue, and for processor development to slow down. Apple is fully prepared for the day that Intel can no longer meet their requirements and so will move on.
- as well as completely rework its supply chain. You make it sound as though it's something they've never done before. :-D
Also, Intel hasn't been struggling to lower power consumption. Apple choose Intel because of their performance per watt roadmap and Intel has vastly reduced TDP while maintaining performance. Intel has been designing processors in exactly the way Apple wants them to do they can have thinner quieter computers that are fast enough to do most things even for pros.
Several years ago many pundits predicted that ARM would have a huge server footprint due to lower TDP leading to higher densities. Intel has successfully countered that by lowering their TDP even though they remain shut out of the mobile market. Which they probably prefer than the other way around given the difference in ASPs.
A the end of the day, if x86 wanes, Intel will just pick up an ARM architecture license and apply their patent portfolio to scale their ARM processors to high performance and multi processor scalability vs lower cost.
Its not like Apple is going to bother to compete making ARM for servers.
Jean-Louis Gassée: