Intel’s seems to be taking wearables very serious

Sep 10, 2014 14:35 GMT  ·  By

It’s not a mystery that Intel has been developing a smartwatch of its own in collaboration with Basis, a wearable technology company that it purchased not so long ago.

Well, this week at the Intel Developer Forum, it was revealed that the watch will be marketed as the Basis Peak and will start shipping out to customers by the end of year (as seen at PCPro).

Intel worked with Basis to produce this wearable

Basis already launched a wearable before being taken under the almighty Intel umbrella, so the Basis Peak will be a next-gen product.

Anyway, Intel CEO Krzanich revealed the Basis band will be thinner, lighter and take advantage of a better screen and better battery life.

By the time Intel pushes out the Basis Peak, the smartwatch ecosystem will be a pretty crowded one. For starters, Apple has just announced its Watch, not to mention the plethora of Android Wear devices will also be there to breathe down its neck.

Intel believes in the power of the Basis Peak

However, Intel relies on the fact that Basis is one of the pioneers of the fitness tracking business, including monitoring heart rate. The chip giant hopes people will remember this aspect when picking up a smartwatch in the future.

The big problem with wearables is that fitness tracker manufacturers usually try to limit customers to their own ecosystem of data.

But Intel plans to break the pattern by offering hardware developers “iQ” development kits which helps them to quickly devise hardware based on Intel’s embedded Edison processor.

An API for the data collected by Basis will also be rolled out, which will be offered to third-party applications.

Head of new device group, Mike Bell, showed at a Developer Forum a single image depicting the wearable, and judging by the render, the smartwatch seems be quit promising, but it remains to be seen how good it looks in day light.

In the presentation, Bell made a point to highlight that wearables should be thought of as technology as well as fashion accessories.

In today’s crowded ecosystem it’s a must that smartwatches or smart bracelets “look fashionable.” Intel already has its bases covered in the fashion department, as the tech giant has just rolled out the MICA luxury bracelet that will be exclusively sold at Barney’s.

On top of that, it was highlighted that smartwatches need to be better targeted at women, something which device manufacturers have failed to do so far and we have to agree.

Anyway, Intel’s latest wearable efforts extend to partnering up with Fossil, which is a major watch and designer brand in the US. So we expect lots of fancy things to come out of Intel.