智能手錶大戰,黑馬先拔頭籌
The first time Eric Migicovsky saw his watch in the wild was at Toronto's Pearson Airport last February. Disembarking a late-night flight, he ran into someone sporting a Pebble on his wrist. "The guy saw me and was like, 'Good work. I just got mine the other day,'" recounts Migicovsky, laughing. "It was just the weirdest thing."
去年二月，在加拿大多倫多皮爾遜機場，埃裏克?米基科夫斯基首次在現實生活中看到自己推出的Pebble手錶。從一架午夜航班上下來時，他遇見了一個戴着Pebble手錶的人。“那哥們看到了我，然後說：‘我這塊Pebble手錶剛買沒幾天。好用極了。’”米基科夫斯基笑着說：“這事真是太不可思議了。”Given its initial success, Migicovsky may want to get used to such encounters. His device, the Pebble smartwatch, became an overnight media sensation last year when it snagged almost $10.3 million in funding on Kickstarter -- over 100 times the original amount Migicovsky hoped to raise. (The Pebble also quickly became exhibit A for the crowdfunding site's power.) The firm's 11 full-time employees have shipped 25,000 watches to date, priced at $99 for early supporters and $150 retail. They expect to ship another 50,000 this month.
鑑於Pebble首戰告捷，米基科夫斯基可能要對這種事習以爲常了。Pebble智能手錶項目去年在衆籌網站Kickstarter上募得近1,030萬美元——比米基科夫斯基原本想募集的金額高出100多倍，一夜之間引起媒體轟動（Pebble也迅速成爲衆籌網站Kickstarter最佳例案證）。Pebble公司11名全職員工迄今已經發貨25,000只Pebble手錶，對初期支持者的定價爲99美元，而零售價爲150美元。他們預計本月將再發貨50,000只。If brisk sales continue, the Pebble is poised to become a significant player in the emerging wearable computing market, which Google (GOOG) will enter later this year with its augmented reality eyeglasses, Google Glass. Even APPle (APPL) may have a smartwatch of its own coming -- if rumors are to be believed. Gartner Research analyst Michael Gartenberg estimates wearable will become a whopping $10 billion industry by 2015.
如果Pebble繼續旺銷，它將成爲正在興起的可佩戴式計算機市場上的一家重要廠商。谷歌（Google）將於今年晚些時候攜增強現實眼鏡產品谷歌眼鏡（Google Glass）進軍這個市場。而且如果傳言屬實，蘋果（Apple）也或將推出自己的智能手錶。市場調研公司高德納（Gartner Research）分析師邁克爾?加騰伯格預期到2015年，可佩戴式計算機將成長爲產值高達百億美元的產業。
The sudden swell in backing came as a surprise to Migicovsky, a University of Waterloo graduate with an engineering degree, who first dreamed up the idea of a watch that connected wirelessly with a smartphone while he was out cycling one day. "I thought, wouldn't it be cool to see text messages, caller ID, and that kind of thing right there on your watch instead of having to take out your phone?" he recalls.
米基科夫斯基擁有滑鐵盧大學（University of Waterloo）工學學士學位。某天他在騎自行車時突發奇想，爲什麼不設計一款能與智能手機無線相連的手錶呢？而Kickstarter上無比成功的募資讓他異常驚喜。米基科夫斯基回憶說：“我想，如果能在手錶上查看短信、來電等各種信息，而不是掏出手機，是不是非常酷？”Not everyone shared Migicovsky's enthusiasm for wearable computing then. Early on, Micicovsky had trouble generating interest from many venture capitalists who were reluctant to invest in a hardware company with the exception of $375,000 raised from four angel investors, including Tim Draper, co-founder of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "I was thinking, 'what happens in a post-Apple world,' and I decided it was watches and glasses," Draper explains. And while Pebble first passed through Paul Graham's famed YCombinator, the same startup incubator that yielded Airbnb and Dropbox, it wasn't until Kickstarter that Pebble really found its footing.
不過，並不是每個人都看好米基科夫斯基的可穿戴式計算機設備。最初，米基科夫斯基很苦惱無法贏得風險投資家們的歡心，這些人可不願意向一家硬件新創企業投資。只有四位天使投資人向米基科夫斯基拋出了橄欖枝，其中包括蒂姆?德瑞普。他是加州門羅帕克市德豐傑風投基金（Draper Fisher Jurvetson）的聯合創始人。他們一共投資375,000美元。德瑞普解釋說：“我一直在思索什麼洞悉能夠稱雄‘後蘋果時代’，我的看法是手錶和眼鏡有望成爲真命天子。”保羅?格雷厄姆創建的風險投資公司YCombinator極富盛名，曾孵化出創新公寓出租服務Airbnb和雲存儲技術公司Dropbox等新創企業。Pebble最初經過了YCombinator的孵化，但直到登陸Kickstarter，Pebble才真正得以立足。Although so-called smartwatches have been tried by other companies like Sony (SNE) and Motorola, the Pebble earned a slew of mostly positive reviews that applauded its sleek waterproof design, including that outdoors-friendly 1.26-inch power-sipping screen that was designed with subtlety in mind. Thanks to a 10-month design process that involved over 50 different prototype designs and 3-D-printed mock-ups, the Pebble looks less like those chunkywatches favored by Dick Tracey and more like a contemporary timepiece. It also works largely as advertised. So long as users have an iPhone or Android device with Bluetooth, Pebble owners can screen calls, check email and other messages. (The Pebble vibrates for every incoming email and text received.)
智能手錶不是什麼新鮮事物，索尼（Sony）和摩托羅拉（Motorola）等公司都曾經推出過類似的產品。但Pebble出手不凡，迅速贏得大量好評。人們交口稱讚它精巧的防水設計、用心打造的戶外式1.26英寸低功耗顯示屏。Pebble的設計週期長達10個月，一共設計過50多個不同的原型和3D打印模型。Pebble看起來可不像迪克?特蕾西所鍾愛的那種笨重的手錶，它可是一款時尚產品。它的功能就像廣告說的那樣：用戶只需打開iPhone或Android手機的藍牙，就能在Pebble上屏蔽來電、查看郵件和信息。（收到郵件或短信的時候，Pebble會震動。）
