(单词翻译:单击)
While Apple was announcing its long-awaited smartwatch (and two updated smartphones), chipmaker Intel was unveiling its own vision for the future of wearables up the Peninsula at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor company, which has long been criticized for being late to the mobile market, is determined to turn the tide and lead in this fledgling product category.
当苹果公司(Apple)发布人们期盼已久的智能手表(以及两款升级版智能手机)时,芯片制造商英特尔(Intel)也在旧金山半岛的莫斯康展览中心(Moscone Center)展示了他们对于可穿戴设备的未来愿景。由于进入移动市场的步伐缓慢,这家位于加利福尼亚州圣克拉拉的半导体公司多年来饱受批评。如今,公司决定扭转态势,力争在这一逐渐成型的产品类别中取得领先地位。
To that end, Intel announced several new offerings at its annual developer forum on Tuesday morning, including an updated “board” developers can use to build all sorts of wearable devices. Called Edison, the postage stamp-sized product features a dual-core system-on-a-chip, Wi-Fi, memory, support for USB and more. The company also announced an “analytics for wearables” program that will provide data-driven intelligence to developers building wearables using its platform.
为了实现这一目标,英特尔在上周二上午举行了年度开发者论坛,发布了几款新的产品,其中包括一款最新的计算平台,可供开发者打造各种类型的可穿戴设备。这一平台名为“爱迪生”,仅有邮票大小,内置双核系统芯片,还支持无线网络、内存、USB和其他功能。公司还推出了一个“可穿戴设备分析”项目,将为使用其平台打造可穿戴设备的开发者提供数据驱动智能服务。
Intel’s still trying to drive demand for new PCs, and has set an ambitious target of getting its chips in 40 million tablets by end of this year. But it’s definitely made it clear that it’s angling for the wearables–and larger “internet of things”–market. (To show just how fancy wearables can get, Intel recently unveiled a high-end, bejeweled smart bracelet at New York Fashion Week). Company president Renee James has her own take on where wearables are going–post Apple smartwatch. Fortune caught up with James to find out more about her company’s vision for the newish market, the competition and what needs to happen for wearables to really take off.
英特尔还在试图扩大新PC机的需求量。他们设立了雄心勃勃的目标,要在今年年底前让4,000万台平板电脑使用公司的芯片。不过公司也明确表示,要在可穿戴设备以及更广大的“物联网”市场大展身手。(为了展现可穿戴设备能够多么时髦,英特尔最近在纽约时装周上推出了一款珠光宝气的高档智能手镯。)苹果推出智能手表之后,可穿戴设备将呈现怎样的发展趋势?英特尔的总裁詹睿妮有自己的见解。《财富》(Fortune)有幸采访到詹睿妮,挖掘了更多相关信息:关于她的公司对新市场的愿景、公司未来面临的竞争,以及可穿戴设备要想真正蓬勃发展还需要什么。
Fortune: Wearables were a big topic at last year’s event. Is it still a big topic?
《财富》:在去年的活动上,可穿戴设备是一个重要话题。现在它还很重要吗?
James: It’s a big deal today but it’s more real today. We’re on the second generation of everything we announced last year, but today what we talked about is the software developer kits. So basically you can get a hardware board, a full software development kit tools and actually build stuff easily and quickly. So what I would say is one year later, everyone’s like, ok, it’s real. They’re on their second rev of the developer board—Edison and they’ve got a full kit. Cause developers just want to know how to hook software to it and build stuff. This conference is all about software developer kits that make it easy to work on Intel platforms. So we announced a kit for internet of things, we announced for wearables and one for high performance computing.
詹睿妮:可穿戴设备如今仍然是一个重要话题,而且还变得更加真实了。我们去年公布的产品,现在已经研发出了第二代,但今天我们要讨论的是软件开发工具包。基本上你拿一块硬件主板,一个完善的软件开发工具包,就能轻松快捷地打造出新的东西。所以仅仅只用了一年的时间,每个人都感到可穿戴设备不再是一个概念,而是实实在在的产品了。开发者可以用第二代开发主板爱迪生,还能获取开发工具包。他们只需要知道如何在其上挂载软件、开发产品就可以了。这次会议的主题就是软件开发包,它们可以让人们轻松地在英特尔平台上工作。我们发布了物联网开发工具包、可穿戴设备开发工具包,以及用于高性能计算的工具包。
On the wearables side are you competing with Samsung now, since they recently launched their own platform?
在可穿戴设备领域,你们正在同三星(Samsung)竞争吗?他们最近也发布了自己的平台。
Samsung has a product and they are attracting developers to their platform. So they’re more about getting developers to actually write apps, because most of the apps for that device are actually Samsung-written today. They want to extend it to become the de facto standard open interface for everyone. We’re about getting all the people who want to compete with Samsung to be able to build devices. So we’re kind of down at the guts level saying, hey, we can give you the hardware, the sensor platform, the software you need to go build your own one. So our point of view on it is we’re more generic. We’re about enabling the masses to be able to do the kinds of things that Samsung’s doing for their own products.
三星推出了一款可穿戴设备产品,并试图吸引开发者使用他们的平台。他们更想让开发者来编写应用,因为当下的大多数应用实际上都是三星自己编写的。他们想要将平台拓展成为业界标准的开放界面,供每个人使用。而我们则汇集了所有想要打造可穿戴设备,与三星竞争的人。所以在本质上我们类似于在说:嘿,我们可以给你所需的硬件、传感技术平台和软件,你来打造你自己的产品。所以我们觉得自己的机制更为通用。三星只给自己的产品做开发,而我们让大家都来做开发。
They seem to say they’re taking a much more open approach and want even other manufacturers to use it.
三星似乎认为他们的方式更加开放,甚至希望其他生产商也使用这个平台。
I think that’s what they want but I don’t know if other people will do it. So Apple will do what Apple is doing, which apparently they announced a moment ago. I don’t know if people will go Samsung’s route but it’s the right objective.
我认为这是三星自己的想法,我不知道其他人是否会这么做。苹果在走自己的路,显然,他们刚刚发布了自己的产品。我不知道人们会不会按照三星的路线走,但这是一个正确的目标。
I know Intel is somewhat agnostic on the actual products, but what do you think is going to really take off on the wearables side?
我知道落到实际产品上,英特尔总有一些不可知论的意味,但是在可穿戴领域,你觉得有哪些产品将会真正蓬勃发展起来?
In my experience in this industry the things that have been breakthrough have all been about connecting human beings to each other, communicating with each other. Do I really care about my heart rate all the time? But the fact I can get my text messages without looking at my phone. There’s others in the world that I’ve seen that have private display on the inside, and there’s some that have haptics (technology that uses the sense of touch like vibrations, for example). If you can make it so that I could touch somebody remotely through a wearable because it has haptic feedback—like I could give a hug and it would touch you or pinch you—that would be killer. People want to chitchat, they talk, they text. I think that’s it. I think that they don’t do anything that your phone can’t do yet and they need to do something more, not only be more stylish.
以我的经验来看,这个行业中获得突破性进展的产品都是能够让人们彼此联系、互相交流的。我真地会时刻关注我的心率吗?不,但我想要不掏出手机就看到短信。我看过一些可穿戴设备,它们有非常私密的显示功能,其中一些用到了触觉技术(这是一种利用振动等触觉感受的技术)。如果你能开发出一种拥有触觉反馈功能的可穿戴设备,让我触摸到千里之外的其他人——比如我做出一个拥抱,设备就会环抱着你——那绝对棒极了。人们想要聊天,他们想要交谈、发短信,我认为这是关键。我觉得开发者还没有研发出那些用手机无法实现的功能,因此他们还需要做得更多,而不仅仅是让可穿戴设备的外型更加时尚。