Recently Chipzilla had a disaster with its Basis Peak smartwatch which had a nasty habit of getting a little warm. If you were serious about the internet of things you would worry about how this news would be treated. You would replace the watches and put it all down to a minor problem which only affected a few people.
However, Chipzilla did not do that. It recalled the lot and offered to pay back users’ money. It now plans to shut down the supporting cloud service by the end of this year.
The overheating problem could be the result of a chip design problem. Again this is a disaster if you are hoping to make a lot of money from the internet of things. One which should be handled, not by shutting down but by showing you know what you are doing.
Observers think that Intel is giving up on the new market segment. Earlier this year Intel announced it had stopped development of the SoFIA smartphone processor and cut back on Atom processor development.
In fact, despite being one of the loudest endorsers of the internet of things, Chipzilla has failed to make much of an impact. It has not pulled out completely, it just seems no longer interested the more consumer stuff and is focusing on industrial systems.
But its exit from the market is final. No one is going to believe Intel is really committed as it shuts down IoT based operations like its Peak cloud operations.
OK wearables always were going to be a non-starter at least until someone could find a product that everyone wanted. Apple claimed it was a watch... it wasn’t. The fitness market is going well but it is limited.
The Peak shows up Intel’s commitment problem. Until it caught fire it was not a bad object. In fact few people noticed any overheating problem and it had a good battery life. But Intel did not bother marketing it well and this is where it needed to pull its finger out.
But Intel does not appear to be able to do the consumer stuff, rather similar in fact to Microsoft. Although lately Vole has been getting better at it. Instead it looks like Intel has just pulled out of the consumer internet of things like it did mobile. It is fast running out of new areas to get into.
