智能手表大战，黑马先拔头筹

    去年二月，在加拿大多伦多皮尔逊机场，埃里克•米基科夫斯基首次在现实生活中看到自己推出的Pebble手表。从一架午夜航班上下来时，他遇见了一个戴着Pebble手表的人。“那哥们看到了我，然后说：‘我这块Pebble手表刚买没几天。好用极了。’”米基科夫斯基笑着说：“这事真是太不可思议了。”

    鉴于Pebble首战告捷，米基科夫斯基可能要对这种事习以为常了。Pebble智能手表项目去年在众筹网站Kickstarter上募得近1,030万美元——比米基科夫斯基原本想募集的金额高出100多倍，一夜之间引起媒体轰动（Pebble也迅速成为众筹网站Kickstarter最佳例案证）。Pebble公司11名全职员工迄今已经发货25,000只Pebble手表，对初期支持者的定价为99美元，而零售价为150美元。他们预计本月将再发货50,000只。

    如果Pebble继续旺销，它将成为正在兴起的可佩戴式计算机市场上的一家重要厂商。谷歌（Google）将于今年晚些时候携增强现实眼镜产品谷歌眼镜（Google Glass）进军这个市场。而且如果传言属实，苹果（Apple）也或将推出自己的智能手表。市场调研公司高德纳（Gartner Research）分析师迈克尔•加腾伯格预期到2015年，可佩戴式计算机将成长为产值高达百亿美元的产业。

    米基科夫斯基拥有滑铁卢大学（University of Waterloo）工学学士学位。某天他在骑自行车时突发奇想，为什么不设计一款能与智能手机无线相连的手表呢？而Kickstarter上无比成功的募资让他异常惊喜。米基科夫斯基回忆说：“我想，如果能在手表上查看短信、来电等各种信息，而不是掏出手机，是不是非常酷？”

    不过，并不是每个人都看好米基科夫斯基的可穿戴式计算机设备。最初，米基科夫斯基很苦恼无法赢得风险投资家们的欢心，这些人可不愿意向一家硬件新创企业投资。只有四位天使投资人向米基科夫斯基抛出了橄榄枝，其中包括蒂姆•德瑞普。他是加州门罗帕克市德丰杰风投基金（Draper Fisher Jurvetson）的联合创始人。他们一共投资375,000美元。德瑞普解释说：“我一直在思索什么洞悉能够称雄‘后苹果时代’，我的看法是手表和眼镜有望成为真命天子。”保罗•格雷厄姆创建的风险投资公司YCombinator极富盛名，曾孵化出创新公寓出租服务Airbnb和云存储技术公司Dropbox等新创企业。Pebble最初经过了YCombinator的孵化，但直到登陆Kickstarter，Pebble才真正得以立足。

    智能手表不是什么新鲜事物，索尼（Sony）和摩托罗拉（Motorola）等公司都曾经推出过类似的产品。但Pebble出手不凡，迅速赢得大量好评。人们交口称赞它精巧的防水设计、用心打造的户外式1.26英寸低功耗显示屏。Pebble的设计周期长达10个月，一共设计过50多个不同的原型和3D打印模型。Pebble看起来可不像迪克•特蕾西所钟爱的那种笨重的手表，它可是一款时尚产品。它的功能就像广告说的那样：用户只需打开iPhone或Android手机的蓝牙，就能在Pebble上屏蔽来电、查看邮件和信息。（收到邮件或短信的时候，Pebble会震动。）

    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."

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.)