Microsoft has entered the wearables market with the Microsoft Band, which links to both the Microsoft Health cloud platform and to a user’s phone and other computing devices, via the Cortana intelligent digital assistant.
Microsoft Band’s continuous heart rate monitoring provides a detailed calorie count and sleep quality measurements. With the inclusion of intelligent personal assistant Cortana on Windows Phone 8.1, the band also offers hands-free access to the web and your most important correspondence whether you’re at the office or at the gym.
Available on Windows Phone, iOS and Android, Microsoft Health’s open cloud platform stores, organises and learns from your fitness information in order to give specific prompts to improve your fitness.
Thanks to deep collaboration with Microsoft Research (MSR), Microsoft Health and Microsoft Band will only continue to add more capabilities. “Microsoft has the big data analytics and machine learning to attack fitness and productivity challenges in this way,” Zulfi Alam, GM of Personal Devices at Microsoft, says.
Microsoft Band, the first device powered by Microsoft Health, helps you achieve a user’s wellness goals by tracking their heart rate, steps, calorie burn, and sleep quality. It also helps users be more productive with email previews and calendar alerts.
The Microsoft Health platform includes a cloud service for consumers and the industry to store and combine health and fitness data to create powerful insights. Microsoft Health will be available for consumers from the new Microsoft Health app which launched yesterday on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
