Can wearable hardware startups have a future?

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Many people will 2013 as the first year of wearable equipment, just past CES exhibition from Razer Nabu, Martian notifier and other hardware start-ups, to Sony, LG, ZTE and other consumer electronics manufacturers, to Intel, CSR and other semiconductor manufacturers, With nearly all the hardware companies involved in this wearable device, the heat of the wearable equipment at CES gives us more anticipation in the new Year.

2012 Pebble on the platform blockbuster, made a model of wearable entrepreneurship, this year CES pebble second-generation products pebble steelcompany Although no substantial improvement, but did have a great change in the smart watch products, Pebble is also destined to be a classic that cannot be ignored. Compared with many giants in the wearable field of the trial and exploration, more stirring can wear this wave tide is more startups, wearable equipment entrepreneurship has gradually gained more and more attention. This article unifies this time oneself to be able to wear some experience experience, combs down my viewpoint.

1, can wear has really come?

While the wearable craze at CES shows, but there are plenty of them to look at, Microsoft's senior vice president, Zhang, said during CES: the wearable industry is still in its infancy and will not be a great cause within five years. Indeed, although many companies have introduced wearable equipment at CES, but for the Giants, wearable more is to try and explore, for startups, some products are still "geek", the current stage is still niche market.

There is no doubt that the market is still nurturing, but I do not agree that it will take five years, as Zhang said. The internet age is an explosive development era, five years time, big screen mobile phones, tablets have been integrated into our lives, mobile phone processor from the original single core 400M frequency to today's eight core 2G above the main frequency. Five years ago there was no Sina Weibo, no micro-mail, and five years ago Windows Mobile was in the ascendant.

The internet age is one of the most insecure times. In five years, you can dump Nokia, hang up Motorola, destroy the BlackBerry, and in five years Facebook can overtake Yahoo from scratch and squeeze out MySpace. So for giants such as Intel and Sony, wearable devices are both exploration and defense and layout, and while the market is still growing, who can be sure that wearable devices will not be the next growth and breakout point?

Relative to Microsoft's weakness in the mobile internet world, logically speaking, Microsoft should seize all possible growth points, as the old comrade-in-arms of Intel, Zhang's view is a personal opinion or Microsoft's overall understanding of this is not known, but it is noteworthy that the domestic internet giants in the past year, Baidu, 360, Shanda and other companies have introduced wearable products, and in the follow-up to the positive layout of products, but also the successive, blossoming entrepreneurial companies, no matter how the current market, it is undeniable that the age of wearable has come!

2. Can wearable hardware start a future?

Many areas of the Internet are destined to be Giants or even oligarchs, wearable equipment will be so, only at this stage is still in the "Make cake" stage, for small companies and even entrepreneurs, so that the Giants to explore and even defend the big cake, even to the "cake" stage, with the help of the Giants to build the stage can sing a play.

Wearable hardware is there a future? A brief summary of my ideas for the wearable hardware business, due to the length of the relationship between the three points here is not specific expansion:

(1) Internet business, what is the future, what is the future?

For Internet entrepreneurship, to make good products, there is a good market is not necessarily the only future, as Lo Zhenyu said the difference between the internet age and the traditional era, the internet age into a bamboo forest rather than a few pyramid peaks, like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in the bamboo struggle, the bamboo missed still have the opportunity to seize another tree. For the internet business is the same, seize a meaningful thing, intentions to make good products, and the market is too many variables, even if not access to the market, do the product process reflected in the style of doing things, the ability to integrate resources will be to seize the next bamboo capital, entrepreneurship to do is the product, but also the team and ability, Wearable, no matter what the market is, is definitely an area worth doing.

(2) Internet entrepreneurship is the game of giants

As the previous article said, in the internet age, many areas will be Giants and even the era of oligarchs, but also the lack of security for the giants of the era. So this era has the time of the routines and play. For entrepreneurs, the game of Giants is also a way out of internet entrepreneurship. Take the recent thunder of the taxi software as an example, perhaps many people wonder, this no business model whether in the short term or in the long run is difficult to see the profit and market access and need a lot of investment in the taxi software why can keep financing, a lot of burning money?

This is just like the dark forest law of the universe in the novel three bodies, this is the law of the Internet, although the taxi software itself does not have a clear business model, but the real solution to the problem, the impact of life, and the giants of the business integration will have greater competitiveness, and the Giants have the ability to bring this effect to the present, Even if it is not clear whether it is possible to become aware of it, the impact and resources cannot be made available to rivals in the sense of insecurity. Therefore, Ali in the fast, Tencent's drip, the giants of the game, many of the time is to start a transformation.

(3) Change, it is possible

Back to wearable itself, "wearable equipment hardware start-up has no future" the author of this conclusion has several basic points: first, the hardware threshold is high, the second is the business model is not clear, the third is the functional location confusion. I basically agree with the author's point of view, but the author ignores one point, that is "change, it is possible", and this is precisely the charm of the Internet. For the hardware threshold, I recently saw a little joke about Pebble:

Pebble the first generation of conceptual design, people called him the next Apple. But when Pebble came to China's Shenzhen Huaqiang north to look for processing plants, Shenzhen factory circulating in the circle said: to the batch of foreigners, to produce 100,000 electronic watches, do not know whether the brain was kicked by a donkey, so small amount also to annoy us, we are at least hundreds of thousands of of the list to do processing. Finally, is a small factory in Shenzhen to help do the processing, so also appeared behind the "Pebble physical quality is too poor, users request returns" news.

Shenzhen Perfect industrial chain, coupled with such a model as MediaTek, combined with commonly used pre-sale, engineering machines, snapping and so on, the threshold of hardware is there, but definitely better than many industries. And from the domestic situation, the hardware scheme, not only is not the threshold, but also rely on, too much want to earn a quick copy of the mobile phone program and model, so the birth of a group of exotic products, it also caused a disorderly image of wearable equipment. Combined with the above two points, from this point of view, the business model is not a problem, and functional positioning confusion, in my "smart watch 2014: First change the routine, and then talk about Subversion!" has been discussed in detail in this article.

3, the giant set up a good opera!

PC-era Microsoft and Intel, mobile internet era of arm and Google, in the transition to a new era, the platform of products to provide more conducive to the development of the "soil" and greater development prospects, and the previous generation platform is exactly like the next generation of the biggest stumbling block. Microsoft's windows in the mobile Internet era failed to say because Microsoft is too successful on the PC, now into the wearable era, Android will be the same as windows, this is not necessarily, this is how the rear giants to build the platform.

In my previous article, I talked a few basic ideas about smart watches, the most basic one is to reconstruct the watch for the demand, instead of the machine to do subtraction, as a mobile phone to do the routine to do the watch. As the previous article says, Android's perfect ecosystem MediaTek's hyper-integrated solution, the Shenzhen model of the mature industrial chain, hardware is not the threshold, but also rely on, it is in the software and hardware dependence and laziness, led to those propaganda can run points, can run the original Android, can play the game of watch products appear. These platforms are not not can be used, but these are smart phone platform can not be applied mechanically, in a new field before the first look for the user needs, from the demand to do the best products, rather than piling up the function of the chicken for their laziness and dependence to find excuses.

So what is a wearable platform? How will the Giants set up? The smart hardware platform Edison Intel released this year at CES has been a major concern, with Intel "Quark" processors with an intelligent hardware platform that is only SD card sized to be intel® "Quark" After the processor the further layout of the field of wearable and intelligent hardware. However, compared to the widely adopted platform such as MediaTek MT6572, Edison is far from adequate in terms of performance, price, software and developer resources, but this is a very meaningful start for Intel, which has missed the mobile internet.

For some wearable devices, such as smart bracelets, watches and so on, it is far from necessary to have a dual-core 1GHz processor and a robust system such as Android, which is suitable for smart homes, smart TVs, intelligent routing, but it's really bloated for wearable devices, As a result, I am looking forward to the introduction of targeted platforms and integrated solutions for companies such as Texas Instrumentation (TI) and Italian semiconductor (ST), as opposed to Intel.

TI has launched the mobile phone processor market, but TI is still a well-deserved semiconductor giants, in power management, baseband, wireless, processor and other fields have a very good product line, TI has introduced a part of the solution. St in the mobile phone processor market has been not satisfactory, STE U8500 and other products market response is very general, but the market leader in mobile phone sensors, while the most powerful Cortex_m series products. Therefore, if Ti and St including NXP, Freescale and other companies, can be based on wearable functional needs and positioning for further integration, provide the perfect hardware and software resources, there will be a greater prospect.

From a specific technical point of view, Sony's smartwatch, Pebble and other products are using the St STM32 series processor, CORTEX-M3, M4 architecture, compared to the traditional cortex-a architecture of the mobile phone processor, has a very low power consumption and relatively wearable products sufficient performance. If the CORTEX-M processor, Bluetooth, power management and other necessary modules can be integrated on the hardware, the RTOS (lightweight real-time system), GUI (user interface), the underlying data synchronization, message reminders and other functions of software integration, the introduction of more integrated solutions, Will bring a better spring to wear.

Back to the beginning of this article Microsoft, Microsoft also has a lot of space, Microsoft has already launched for CORTEX-M3 for the super lightweight platform of the. NET Micro Framework software architecture, Agent smartwatch and other watches products have also adopted the architecture. NET Micro Framework At this stage itself is already very embarrassing, if Microsoft can for wearable applications, with its powerful software resources, the introduction of more targeted software architecture and development platform, then in the wearable field will have a very broad market.

The giant set up a good opera, for entrepreneurs, platform is the idea and creativity to achieve a stepping stone rather than rely on, and as the market gradually opened, gradually rich platform resources will provide many entrepreneurs more possibilities. New forms, new features, new play is constantly being explored, product function and consumer demand constantly collide, user habits are gradually changing, market demand is gradually nurtured, can wear the entrepreneurial not so pessimistic