Microsoft Enters the Wearables Market With 'Band'

Microsoft has announced the availability of "Microsoft Band," a wearable device that goes on the wrist. It's designed to do health- and fitness-related tasks, like monitoring heart rate and how well a wearer sleeps, and its on-board GPS lets users map their run/bike routes. The company says Band plays nicely with iOS and Android devices in addition to Windows phones. It also has full support for viewing phone notifications and calendar alerts, and a built-in microphone enables queries through the Cortana personal assistant software. The display is rectangular, 11mm x 33mm (0.43" x 1.3"), and has a resolution of 320x106. They claim a battery life of 48 hours, with a charge time of 1.5 hours or less. The device costs $200.

Comments

its like theyre getting worse.

[nimbius]

when he iphone came out redmond took 4 years to consider the prospect of a competitive product. Once they released it, nobody cared because two smartphone manufacturers already existed in the market. The fitbit is a 7 year old product. most cellphone accellerometers do the same thing, including the windows phone. regardless microsoft decided to make this thing, 7 years into the market when everyone from nike to apple already have a competing product with greater market share.

Microsoft makes a stunning move

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Microsoft announced that starting from 2015, there will be a grand fusion of ALL User Interfaces. All devices, from wearable watch like device, to 4 or 5 inch phones, to 7 or 10 inch tablets to 15 or 18 inch laptops to 23 to 36 inch desktops will all use the Microsoft Band UI as the default UI.

There will be a hidden hotspot at the lower left corner to bring up the phone UI, and it will have another hidden hot spot and the mid point of left edge of screen to bring up the tablet UI, and that will have a hidden hot spot at top right to bring up the laptop UI and there will be a hot spot on the top left to bring up the desktop UI.

So, in one fluid motion, you can hit all the four corners and move up and down the UI. National Association of Chiropracters and Carpel Tunnel Healers of America welcomed the new UI and gave 10$ off coupons to all Microsoft users.

Re:Device looking for a use case

[Maxwell]

You don' t have a Tag Heuer. You have a $50 battery powered quartz watch with a very expensive Tag Heuer sticker on it. A real, Automatic Movement Tag has about a 48 hour reserve, after that it needs to be worn, wound or placed in a winder.

Not the two markets overlap much, but there are a lot of watches out there that won't run for more than 48hours....

And back on topic, this thing looks really good. I don't care about the health stuff that much, but the smart watch features look great.

Re: hmm

[Rob Y.]

Not quite. Microsoft has an immensely profitable business selling software to customers - but the stock price already reflects that. The perverse thing about Capitalism in America today is that being a hugely profitable business isn't enough. To satisfy the investor class, you need to generate an ever increasing stock price. And for a mature company like Microsoft, that means finding new revenue streams. So, while they could continue indefinitely with their software for cash business model, what they're trying to do is to copy other companies' models in addition. They're not particularly creative, so when they enter the search market, they do it by copying Google's business model as well as their technology - with the same incentives to mine your data. To think that they don't do that simply because they make a lot of money selling software is pretty naive. If they don't mine your data now, it's because they're not successful enough, and they're still in the loss-leader phase of trying to break into the business. But they probably mine you anyway...