The chip giant paid $100 million / €73 million for the company

Mar 5, 2014 07:43 GMT  ·  By

Whenever Intel lays its eyes on a new device type or market segment, you can be sure it will go on an acquisition quest. That's exactly what happened recently, concluding with the total buyout of a company called Basis.

Truth be told, the name of the company doesn't really do much to let people know what it does and wants to do in the future.

Basis is a maker of wristband health trackers, like Fitbit and Jawbone, but it isn't a particularly large supplier of such things.

To help put things in perspective, Fitbit dominates the segment with a share of 58%, while Jawbone lags behind with 21%.

Basis' 7% share is tiny by comparison, which is probably why Intel had such an easy time buying it out.

After all, for a company that makes billions in profits every quarter, a hundred million dollars is a pittance.

Stephen Holmes, vice president at Intel, couldn't say when Intel actually plans to launch a smartwatch, now that it has the engineers to create one.

Fortunately, the company will be able to ease its way in. Basis has never actually made a smartwatch, but its wristband health trackers are a suitable enough (pardon the pun) “basis” for them.

This “easing in” will probably happen over the course of this year. Intel might not be able to provide an ETA for the watch, but it does mean to release some fitness gadgets by Christmas.

That gives Chipzilla 10 months to establish a presence in the wearable gadget market segment. Intel might have a lot of clout on the processor market, but its forays into other segments, like SSDs and TVs, have been met with varying degrees of success, from decent (SSDs) to none (TVs).

Intel's intent for joining the smartwatch market is an old one, insofar as smartwatches can even be considered old (they are a concept that has only been around in palpable form for a couple of years).

The Santa Clara, California-based outfit is collaborating with New York fashion label Opening Ceremony to put it together, and that's all that has so far been said on the matter.

As always, Intel wants to become a leader in the nascent industry. Whether or not anything comes of these plans remains to be seen. As we said before, the chip giant might be a powerful brand, but it has suffered its fair share of failures over the decades.