Interesting article.
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Intel Hints At Wearable Gadgets With Hires
By Don Clark
Steve Holmes, a designer who has joined Intel'sINTC +0.31% new devices group Intel Free Press
Intel’s new leaders have said it needs to move more quickly toward where the high-tech world is headed, not just supply chips for already-popular products like smartphones. Two recent hires bolster hints Intel has been dropping about jumping on the wearable-device craze.
One is Steve Holmes, a designer who worked on the popular Nike FuelBand, who joined the company about 12 months ago. He is now a vice president in Intel’s recently formed “new device” group.
More recently, Intel also recruited Hans Moritz, who worked at Oakley on products like its heads-up goggle display and its watch program.
The two men are part of a group headed by Mike Bell, the former Apple and Palm manager who had been helping to lead Intel’s efforts in smartphone chips until he was shifted to the new-devices group in a reorganization spearheaded by Brian Krzanich, who became Intel’s new CEO in May.
Krzanich and Renee James, who was appointed Intel’s president at the same time, are scheduled to give their first keynote speeches in their new roles at Intel’s annual developer forum Tuesday. They are expected to plans to get Intel to step up its game in mobile devices, a market where most customers use chips based on designs from ARM Holdings.
In an interview with the Journal last month, James was asked if Intel has any wearable computers now.
“None that are announced, but you should come to our developer conference in September,” she responded. “We’re going to be talking about where we see computing is going, where Intel is going, and a lot more about how we think computing will be used in the future, beyond the form factors you see today.”
It seems a bit unlikely that Intel would make a smartwatch or some other device and sell it to consumers, as companies like Samsung Electronics is. Intel shies away from competing with companies that could use its chips to make products.
But the company makes plenty of “reference designs” for products that it gives to makers of devices like laptop PCs and smartphones that could help companies that buy its chips get to market faster.
It could go one step further, like rival Qualcomm. The San Diego company also prefers to sell components, but on Wednesday announced plans to market a “limited edition” smartwatch called Toq that CEO Paul Jacobs hopes will serve as a “catalyst” to sales of Qualcomm displays and other technology.
Intel’s recent hires, which had largely gone unnoticed, were reported in the company’s own internal Web publication, Intel Free Press. Before Nike, Holmes did design work at Palm and Apple. He declined to discuss specific product plans, the Intel article stated, but focused more on the value of the data and software rather than gadget hardware itself.
“I come from the hardware side, but even in the best of scenarios many of these objects are going to end up buried in a desk drawer in five years,” he told the publication. “It’s the software and the data that can live on forever if you make them valuable.”
