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Intel Bets Its “Smart” Shirt on the Future of Wearables (Video)

Intel’s Mike Bell shows Re/code’s Lauren Goode a “smart” shirt that measures your heart rate and is powered by Intel chips.

Asa Mathat

Many millions of wearable computing devices are expected to ship this year (depending on which forecast you read), and a healthy debate is emerging over whether wearables are best applied to the wrist, to the face or in some other form — like in the clothing we already wear.

The company’s head of new devices, Mike Bell, gave us at Re/code an early glimpse of an Intel-sensor-laden shirt that measures heart rate without use of an additional heart rate strap. Later on, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed the same shirt on stage during his Code Conference session with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The “smart” shirt is just one of a few products that the company had previously talked about at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, as it ramps up efforts to work with manufacturing partners that will bring these types of products to market.

Even if the wearable computer market goes bonkers over the next few years, Intel’s wearable-specific chips would still make up a relatively small sliver of the company’s business — not to mention that Intel has plenty of competition from ARM-based rivals. But it’s clear the company’s strategy is to be wherever the wearables are.

Check out the video below:

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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