AT&T will provide data service for Intel’s new MICA wearable, which will retail this holiday season at Barney’s and other high-end retailers. MICA, which stands for My Intelligent Communications Accessory, is a bejeweled bracelet that will retail for $495, a price that many holiday shoppers will happily pay for a bracelet that does more than complete an outfit.
MICA does much more — it shows the user updates from email and social media, and uses GPS to alert users to the location of nearby services. MICA allows users to respond to incoming messages, but only by selecting from a menu of responses. An AT&T SIM card gives the wearable its own phone number for texting, but MICA does not make voice calls.
Part of the device’s high-end appeal is its sapphire touchscreen, and Intel says that it has also used pearls, lapis stones, obsidian and tiger’s eye in the MICA designs.
The MICA wearable is groundbreaking on several fronts. First, it is the first wearable from a major manufacturer to try to make a fashion statement without also offering fitness tracking or time keeping. Second, it includes an AT&T SIM card, giving it a unique registration id with the carrier. And finally, it sports an ARM-based processor, even though it is made by Intel. Intel has used an ARM-based design from Infineon, a company it bought in 2011.
The Mobile Minute is sponsored by Juniper Networks.
In other news, AT&T and Verizon are taking different approaches to tracking users on the Internet:
