
Intel shuts down group working on wearables and fitness trackers - happy-go-lucky
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/intel-shuts-down-group-working-on-wearables-and-fitness-trackers/
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giobox
The writing has been on the wall for a while. The blogger DCRainmaker has
superb coverage of the fitness tracking industry, has covered Intel's moves in
this space pretty thoroughly - in the case of Basis we knew this largely a
year ago.

[https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/08/tech-tidbits-basis-
close...](https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/08/tech-tidbits-basis-closes-up-
shop-strava-announces-live-tracking-platform.html)

I'm curious if this affects the Recon Jet? This was one of the more innovative
things Intel's wearable teams were working on, basically Google Glass for
sports.

[https://www.reconinstruments.com/products/jet/](https://www.reconinstruments.com/products/jet/)

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gnicholas
> _The Peak never truly competed with Fitbit devices, and it certainly didn 't
> stand up to the Apple Watch when that device debuted in 2015._

I actually really liked my Peak, whose battery lasted nearly a week, and which
had a reliable heart rate monitor. After the recall, I tried an Apple Watch
(v1) and various other smartwatches. The Apple Watch was, for my purposes,
inferior to the Peak in several ways: the battery life was very short, it had
no HR monitor, and it was very expensive. In my experience, the Peak even
pushed notifications from my iPhone more reliably than the Apple Watch.

To be sure, the Peak wasn't beautiful, but as a V1 it seemed like a product
with legs.

disclosure: I received my Peak for free from Intel at their ICAP conference.

~~~
wlesieutre
Similar feelings about my Pebble Time. The Apple Watch throws away the battery
life and replaces it with things I don't need. I don't have a heartrate
monitor though, and they went out of business before the v2 could add it.

As far as the Apple Watch's heartrate monitoring is concerned, it definitely
has one. Not only that, it's significantly more accurate than any other
fitness tracker's.

[http://www.mdpi.com/jpm/jpm-07-00003/article_deploy/html/ima...](http://www.mdpi.com/jpm/jpm-07-00003/article_deploy/html/images/jpm-07-00003-g002.png)

[http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/7/2/3/htm](http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/7/2/3/htm)

~~~
gnicholas
I actually ended up with the Pebble Time also, and excitedly pre-ordered the
Time 2. I would have been willing to pay so much more for it, and I wish
they'd just told their backers that either everyone could pay an extra $100 or
it was gonna go bust. I imagine I'm not the only one who would pay Apple Watch
prices for a Pebble Time 2.

I have no idea what I'll get when my current Pebble bites the dust. I'm not
sure which is more likely: that Apple offer a watch with more than a couple
days battery life, or that Fitbit actually integrate the Pebble tech (and
reliability) into their devices. Sigh.

~~~
TimothyGee
I was in the same boat - I ended up replacing my third Pebble with a Garmin
Vivoactive HR. It seems to have fulfilled all of my old requirements
(notifications, good battery, custom watch faces, 3rd party apps), and then
added a few I didn't know I wanted (GPS fitness tracking, Heart Rate Monitor).

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drewcon
I worked for one of the major fitness apps and we partnered with Intel on a
couple integrations years back.

I never understood the huge investment in stand alone wearables/tech outside
of apple/google. The writing was on the wall (for me at least) from day one.
It is/was hard enough for a fitness app to breakthrough without adding complex
hardware and supply chain to the mix.

1) Hardware unitaskers at scale (not niche/pro markets) do not seem to ever
win, platforms do. Why pay $100 for a "connected" pedometer when I can pay
$300 for a do-everything watch from a massive established brand. Platforms
have the scale to get better and better while everyone else struggles and
falls behind.

2) (Real) Retention on fitness wearables in general is terrrrrrible (relative
to other products). After about 30 days, the novelty/initial behavior change
wears off unless you have a chronic or serious need to track. People may
report using them...but getting value is different from "clipping on". tl;dr
fitness is fucking hard.

3) I think fitness/health is the killer app. But its a fully commoditized
utility by now. Its "contacts" or "notepad" but for tracking...so its not
really blowing anyone's mind, its table stakes. And fitness is a "thing I
should do" not a "thing I want to do" for most people -uphill behavioral
battle vs. e.g. putting an awesome camera in a phone I just have to click to
open.

~~~
skinnymuch
What do you think about Under Armour's strategy of spending close to a billion
on I think 3 acquisitions like the MapMyFitness suite of apps, MyFitnessPal,
and one other. Sticking to apps/sites vs wearables.

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leggomylibro
Intel's on-the-go and embedded offerings always seemed half-assed. I'm not
really clear on why they bothered at all. If they had committed, they might've
been able to target similar spaces to Cortex-M processors.

But they didn't commit, and never seemed like they intended to.

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jti107
no big surprise...intel just hasnt been able to match ARM in the low power
area.

~~~
awalton
Or, another perspective, all of the Tech Wearables industry is pretty much
DOA. Intel is hardly the first company to bow out of the space, and will
likely not be the last.

The tech simply isn't there. Smartwatches don't have enough utility compared
to the downsides of constant charging, and are much too power hungry for
automatic or mobile charging (though wireless charging probably gave these
devices a slight bump).

Battery life is very much the chief complaint, followed by weight (which, of
course, ties right back to battery life). The smarter you want to make a
device, the more power it needs, and the more of a battery it needs. Even your
ATmegas are going to struggle - we're simply just not there yet.

I suspect it'll be another case of the Newton - it's cool, way ahead of its
time tech. Give it ten years and we'll be way closer to making something truly
useful with it.

~~~
valuearb
Apple sold $6B worth of Apple Watches in it's first year. Sales increased when
they released the version 2 watches. The rest of the market may be hurting but
Apple is crushing it with theirs.

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PaulHoule
Has Intel ever made a productive acquisition?

~~~
jjtheblunt
Infineon

