Jawbone手环：运动好伙伴

    Jawbone最初扬名立万靠的是高品质、高回头率无线设备。首先它的蓝牙耳机系列大获成功；随后，在去年末，其便携音箱又迅速风靡世界，成为大家必不可少的配件。

    现在，这家位于旧金山的公司又推出了新产品——UP手环。这是一款漂亮的防水腕带，内置加速器，和苹果（Apple）iPhone的加速器颇为相似。Jawbone并不打算发布一款音响设备，这家获得风投支持的公司如今瞄准了另一迅速增长的市场——个人健康配件。位于德克萨斯奥斯丁的市场分析公司First Research表示，虽然现在对UP手环进行市场分析为时尚早，但整个美国健身设备市场的年销售额约为30亿美元。

    UP手环是如何工作的呢？用户可以用它记录自己的日常生活：走了多长距离的路？速度如何？消耗了多少热量、睡眠了几个小时——甚至还能记录睡眠质量。只要将UP手环中隐藏的耳机插头插入iPhone的耳机孔内（位于充电孔边），手环上的所有数据就会同步到iPhone的应用程序中，该程序能分析数据并生成鲜明的彩色图。（Jawbone希望用户能每天同步两到三次。）用户可以通过应用程序拍摄用餐照片，记录每次用餐后的感受，来掌握每天的饮食状况。

    Jawbone希望用户能对自己的身体状况有整体认识，倡导健康生活方式。每次同步后，UP手环都会变得更加“聪明”，例如：用户只需自定义时间范围，手环即可在用户睡眠时挑选出最佳时刻，通过震动将其唤醒。11月6日，UP手环将在美国率先上市，定价为99美元，届时Jawbone官方网站会提供销售，遍布美国的苹果、百思买（Best Buy）、塔吉特（Target）和美国电话电报公司（AT&T）零售店也会参与销售；随后的11月17日，UP手环将在英国上市。

    Jawbone联合创始人兼首席执行官侯赛因•拉赫曼认为，UP手环吸取了公司各方面的精华——换句话说，这是一个戴在手腕上的高精尖饰品。拉赫曼称：“我们在这一领域的设计理念是进行一些从内到外的全面创新，然后将这些创新融合在一起，使其具备高度便携性、可用性，使用户梦寐以求，同时还能与用户手头最智能的便携设备（此处指iPhone——译注）兼容。”

    UP手环还融入了大量社交功能。它能不断更新数据，显示其它UP手环用户的使用状况。用户能加入不同群组，参与到其它用户或每日功绩（DailyFeats）、24小时健身（24 Hour Fitness）、更健康一代联盟（Alliance for a Healthier Generation）等健康组织发起的个人或团体竞赛中。这样的竞赛可能是与朋友协作，在特定时间完成步行10万步的步行；也可能是一日三餐都吃健康食品。这些功能使UP手环和耐克（Nike）旗下的Nike+以及Fitbit等产品颇为相似，后者也是一款记录用户活动的设备。

    Jawbone made a name for itself cranking out high-quality, head-turning wireless devices: first with a successful line of Bluetooth headsets, then with a portable speaker that quickly became a must-have gadget late last year.

    Now, the San Francisco-based company is branching out. Its new UP is a slick, water-resistant wristband with a built-in accelerometer, much like Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. Instead of making another audio device, the venture-backed startup is pushing itself into the rapidly emerging market for personal health gadgets. Though estimates for UP's niche aren't available, according to the Austin, Texas-based market analysis firm First Research, the overall fitness equipment market is worth some $3 billion in sales annually in the U.S.

    How does the device work? It lets users track their daily routines: how much and how fast they walk, calories burned, how many hours slept -- and even the quality of that sleep. Plug the hidden headphone jack into an iPhone's audio jack-in between charges and all that data is synced with an app that analyzes and displays it in brightly colored graphs. (Jawbone expects users to do that two or three times a day.) The app also lets users track how much they eat by letting them snap photos of meals and document how they feel after each meal.

    The idea is to give users a holistic view of their health, encouraging them to make healthy changes. UP gets a little "smarter" with each sync, vibrating and waking users at the best time in their sleep cycles within a user-assigned time frame, for instance. The device will be available on Jawbone's web site, as well as Apple, Best Buy (BBY), Target (TGT) and AT&T (T) locations in the U.S. on November 6 for $99; a UK launch is set for November 17.

    Jawbone co-founder and CEO Hosain Rahman says the idea combines areas of strength for the company -- namely high-tech gadgets that can be worn. "A lot of what we were envisioning with this space is, let's take some interesting innovation both internally and externally, and pull it together in a package that's highly wearable, highly desirable, easily usable and pair it with the smartest device in your pocket," he says.

    There's also a big social element. A news feed of data from the device streams updates of what other UP users are up to. Users can join teams, participate in individual or group challenges created by other users or health organizations like DailyFeats, 24 Hour Fitness or Alliance for a Healthier Generation. An example might include collectively walking 100,000 steps with friends by a certain day and time or eating three healthy meals a day. That puts the device in a similar category as Nike's (NKE) Nike+ products and Fitbit, a device that tracks users' movements.