Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

I've bought New Balance shoes exclusively since 1995 except for a few pairs of Asics that I bought recently (they make a lot of their shoes in New England factories). I have lots of running shirts, socks and shorts from New Balance as well.

So they're a consumer company with a long history of some pretty high-quality products. They also have a fairly large stable of sponsored athletes and I'd guess that they did a thorough job of field-testing the watches. Advanced runners are usually familiar with running watches.

This is a mid-market running watch (Suunto's run around $600 for their high-end stuff) and I think that they're counting on their running apparel and shoe sales to get a foot in the door with customers.

Intel itself has had a poor record on various retail products like VIIV. So partnering is probably a good way to go.