Will.i.am has got in ahead of Apple with the launch of a smartwatch, Puls, the first in a planned line of wearable gadgets from his company i.am+.
The device was unveiled at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, and besides telling the time, tracks activity, plays music, offers GPS navigation and accesses a range of social networks.
Puls can also make voice calls and send texts, with its own SIM card and partnerships with AT&T in the US and O2 in the UK – although owners will be able to use “mirrored” SIM cards with the same account as their smartphone, rather than having to sign up to an extra mobile tariff.
All this may sound like a smartwatch, but US journalists at the Dreamforce event reported that the Black Eyed Peas star prefers to describe the Android-based device as a “cuff” because, as he told Gizmodo, “watches don’t have SIM cards”.
Will.i.am’s wearable ambitions go beyond the Puls, though. He’s also planning to launch a jacket capable of providing power to the device, a backpack with built-in speakers, and shoes tracking their owner’s weight and steps.
He’s pitching i.am+ as the latest crossover between the technology and fashion worlds. “They’re too disciplines that haven’t been disciplined to collaborate. Two worlds so caught up in their awesomeness that they don’t want to collaborate,” he told Gizmodo.
“I sit in the middle. I love fashion – that’s what I went to school for –but I love technology. That’s what I’m telling kids to go to school for.”
Several companies are involved in Puls as partners, including Nuance, which worked with i.am+’s team on a virtual assistant feature called AneedA – the Puls’ equivalent of Apple’s Siri, capable of tasks including taking dictation to send texts, controlling music and scheduling calendar appointments.
British firm 7digital, meanwhile, is running the digital music service that comes with the Puls, with users able to download tracks to the device and play them – through headphones and backpack speakers alike. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter will all be present as apps.
For now, neither Will.i.am nor his mobile operator partners are revealing the price or launch date for the device, although TechCrunch reports that it will be less than the cost of a SIM-free iPhone, although that could mean up to £789 in the UK, based on the 128GB model of the iPhone 6 Plus.
Will.i.am will be hoping for more success with the Puls than the first product launched through i.am+, the foto-sosho iPhone camera case. It launched in the UK in December 2012, and the US the following year, but received a lukewarm critical response.
Still, he has his finger in a number of other technological pies in 2014. In January, he was named chief creative officer of 3D printing company 3D Systems, working with the firm and Coca-Cola on its Ekocycle Cube printer, which was unveiled in June.
In the past, he explored social media through a site called Dipdive in 2008, and launched his own app development firm Will.i.apps in 2011, with the latter releasing a music video app for the Black Eyed Peas.
He was also an early investor in Beats Electronics, which saw him make a handsome – if as yet undisclosed – profit when the company was bought by Apple for $3bn earlier this year.
With Puls, he’ll now be competing directly with Apple, which is due to release its first smartwatch in early 2015, as well as with a range of manufacturers making devices running Google’s Android Wear software.
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