Intel is now laying out the wearable equipment market

DigitalTrends, the US science and technology blogger, wrote today that despite great efforts, Intel remains a "small role" in the mobile chip market. However, Intel is now laying the market for wearable equipment, trying to take the current hot technology as the guide, staged a "curve to save the nation", and finally in the mobile chip market to seize the initiative.

The following is an overview of the article:

Curve to save the nation

Intel wants to do something about the mobile chip sector, but it seems to be in bad luck. While Intel is the dominant player in the desktop and notebook chip markets, it is only a "small role" in the mobile chip market. Rivals such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and MediaTek control 95% per cent of the smartphone chip market, and Intel is struggling to make substantial progress in this area.

Intel has already missed the smartphone, but another ship is on the ship, and Intel has booked a ticket. This time, it looks at the next big event in the tech industry-wearable computing equipment. However, Intel is not fully engaged in this market, but with wearable technology as the guide, circuitous development of the mobile market. While wearable technology is still in its infancy, Intel has the opportunity to seize this opportunity from the outset without acting as a catch-up player in the mobile chip industry.

The problem with wearable technology seems to be becoming a new favorite for Intel, which is that Intel has not made much headway in the mobile chip market-it is now not focused on exploring the US-UK market, but in regions like Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as Tizen, a potentially abandoned mobile operating system.

Intel's mobile strategy is like a "three-color" betting, which first presses on wearable technology, while the "Tizen" processor is relegated to the bottom of the list. However, does Intel want wearable technology to still be at the top of the line at the last corner, and then make the "move" suddenly come to an end at the last minute?

Important Battlefield

Recently, Intel's new CEO, Brian Krzanich, Blaine Clannick in an interview, exposing Intel's ambitions in wearable technology. He told Reuters that Intel chips will appear on "devices that can play a role" by the end of 2013 and continue until early 2014. He specifically mentions the wrist strap and watch, and admits he is a user of Google glasses, also said the wearable computing market "is a battleground for mobile manufacturers."

This is not the first time Intel executives have mentioned wearable technology. This January, Justin Ratner, Intel CTO, said in an interview with the IT website informationweek.com that wearable technology "will be on the show in the coming years", and that the research in the UK laboratory on such devices "is making positive progress".

About 5 months later, Ratner, in an interview with the Guardian, said that once consumers began to use their equipment, the importance of data flow would be highlighted, and data could also be stored in the cloud, further improving the level of intelligence of wearable devices. He also describes a fairly sophisticated digital assistant product that comes from data, photos, emails, and even biometric data shared by users on social networking sites.

Intel acknowledges that people are also eager to wear these futuristic products at work, making design as important as technological innovation. In early 2011, Intel appointed a new creative director (Director of Creative Innovation), who was the head of the Black Eyed Peas band will.i.am. On the eve of the Ratner, in August 2012, he talked about the subject at a conference held at Intel. Will.i.am in an interview about wireless payment technology, smart watches, and the lack of intelligence on everything we wear.

Creative Aesthetics

It is interesting that, even after the end of cooperation with Intel, Will.i.am still has an interest in wearable smart devices. In early 2013, will.i.am introduced an iphone camera accessory called "Foto.sosho". While these are not wearable devices, he says they are "the first step in combining technology with fashion". He also boasts of being a trend-leader, ready to influence popular preferences, "Creating an activity, an aesthetic, around wearable technology." "If will.i.am vision and Intel's technical capabilities can be used to achieve a common goal, then the potential will be unlimited."

Right now, all the talk about wearable technology is very interesting, but can Intel chip find a niche? Google glasses are based on the arm architecture, and Vuzix smart devices and Pebble smart watches also use the same architecture. While Intel did not repeat the slow pace of the mobile market, only the name of Google Glasses is on the list of wearable devices that are expected to have a significant impact on people's future lives.

Ratner also mentioned another topic in the interview that we should not expect wearable technology to replace smartphones or other personal electronic devices in the short term. Some would argue that Intel is not at a disadvantage given the fact that wearable technology products with real influence are not yet available.

Invest heavily

Intel Capital, Intel's investment agency, recently announced that, under its lead, Thalmic Labs has completed a new round of funding of $14.5 million trillion, which was developed by the Myo Arm, which monitors the electrical impulses produced by the muscles and controls the computer wirelessly. Smartphones and other types of gesture devices.

With Intel's investment, thalmic can make full use of the former's manufacturing and technical advantages to further enhance the function of the MYO arm ring. Is the MYO arm ring the first wearable device to use Intel chips? The answer is no, according to Thalmic's website, the MYO arm ring is currently using ARM chips.

Intel also bought Israeli gesture control start-up Omek Interactive at a price of 40 million to 50 million. Unlike thalmic, however, Omek Interactive only developed close-range systems that can be integrated into PCs, tablets and televisions, but not on the wrist watch or bracelet. However, there is speculation that Intel may embed Omek technology in its chips, allowing hardware manufacturers to integrate gesture control systems in their preferred form.

Does that mean Intel has given up on smartphones? The answer is also negative. Clannick said that under his leadership, the focus of the move chip will be comparable to the core PC chip. So some think Intel wants to use smart devices such as watches to kill a engagement and make significant progress in the mobile chip market. It's worth mentioning that the vast majority of wearable devices are now tied to smartphones, and that consumers and hardware makers may embrace Intel's chips if there are many advantages to using Intel chips.

Intel's research on WiFi Radio, wigig and intelligent connections (smart Connect) will facilitate the secure, rapid transmission of data between devices, support remote operations, and enable ultra-high speed wireless docking stations that support computers, smartphones and wearable devices to become a reality. In an interview with Reuters, Clannick said he wanted to "build an ecosystem" that would eventually be achieved by integrating all of these features into a variety of smart devices.

Targeting Emerging markets

In fact, tapping into wearable markets is only part of Intel's mobile strategy. In addition, Intel has made progress in two other important areas: emerging markets and the Tizen of mobile operating systems built by Intel and Samsung.

Intel has focused on developing markets outside the US and UK since the release of the Medfield processor in early 2012. In the meantime, it has reached its first major cooperation agreement with Indian brand Lava, and has signed cooperation agreements with a variety of emerging market manufacturers, such as ZTE, Acer, Lenovo, Baidu, and Safaricom in Africa and Etisalat Misr in Egypt.

At the 2013 Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Intel released the mobile Z2420 Lexington Chip, which is tailored to Intel's handset products for emerging markets. In emerging countries, Low-cost handset sales exceed expensive hardware products. Safaricom, a Kenyan operator, has launched an Android phone YOLO with a Lexington chip and sold out in two weeks. In addition, Lava Xolo X500, Acer liquid C1 and ASUS Fonepad tablets also use Lexington chips.

Intel has never overlooked the K900 smartphone business, which has recently been listed in China, Thailand and Malaysia, and plans to land in 10 other markets, including Russia, by the end of the year. Lenovo also invited NBA star Kobe Bryant (Kobe Bryant) to advertise for K900 and advertise the phone in China and other Asian countries. Lenovo is now China's second-largest handset maker, and has leapt into the world's largest PC maker in the second quarter of this year. Next year, the first smartphone with a new generation of Merrifield processors will be marketed.

Tizen Unknown

Intel is trying to win the first-best advantage in emerging markets. That sounds like an ideal strategy, but the reason Intel has been slow to release high-end smartphones such as K900 in the US or UK is that the two countries lack 4G LTE connections. Even if Intel intends to release the 4G LTE tablet this year, it has yet to confirm whether the Merrifield phone will have the same 4G LTE capability.

Intel's last sharp weapon is Tizen, but Tizen appears to have been shelved in the four new operating systems expected to be launched this year. Firefox OS devices have been sold, Jolla Sailfish OS handsets are also quite popular, while Tizen phones have jumped two times in the past few weeks, and there have even been rumors that the Tizen project has been completely canceled.

Tizen is a good operating system, and Intel's own obsidian user interface looks the same good, but the crux of the problem is not its function, or the use of Tizen hardware type, but consumer deep-rooted ideas. The Mobile world has been monopolized by giants, and Jolla, Firefox, and Ubuntu have been able to attract attention, partly thanks to their independent nature.

Even if the first Tizen mobile phone can be listed successfully, but it may use the Samsung Exynos processor, Exynos processor is based on ARM architecture development. Why did Samsung slap himself? This is not because of the lack of 4G functionality mentioned above, but because Samsung tested Intel chips on only one tablet, preferring to offend partners and insist on using its own chips. After all, Samsung wants Tizen to have an ideal start, but Intel chips do not help to achieve this goal.

A happy ending.

In an interview with the Financial Times, ARM's new CEO, Simon Higas, said he was not concerned about Intel's latest developments, saying that ARM had expected Intel to gain a market share of the mobile chips. The Swiss bank has raised its arm stock rating and is expected to achieve a 28% per cent annual composite growth rate for arm earnings by 2017. Intel's rival AMD has confirmed that its first mobile chip will use ARM architecture.

Even if arm's dominance is being threatened by Intel, the threat is not yet apparent, and Apple, Samsung, Sony and HTC all prefer Qualcomm and Nvidia's ARM architecture chips, a situation unlikely to change in the short term. Coupled with the slow growth of Intel mobile chips and the near-death of the Tizen project, wearable technology has become more attractive in Intel's eyes.

So far, no breakthrough wearable product has been released, and it is thought that Intel is sure to want a micro-moving chip on the market. The birth of the new mobile product category also means that Intel can avoid some of the problems currently facing it and quickly put it into the arms of hardware vendors, who may also be reluctant to miss wearable technology "the ship". But could it persuade them to use Intel chips in a new generation of mobile phones? Obviously, Intel hopes this will be the result.