Intel’s push beyond PCs took the chipmaker to an unlikely place this week: The National Retail Federation’s annual conference in New York.
At the show, Intel unveiled a plan to invest $100 million over the next five years into retail technology. CEO Brian Krzanich revealed the strategy during his keynote.
He also announced the Intel Responsive Retail Platform, which offers shoppers a more customized experience.
“With the goals of lowering costs and increasing sales, the platform helps optimally place inventory, deploy employees and other resources, and track inventory — through the supply chain to the store door,” Krzanich wrote in a blog post.
“It provides in-the-moment information about what customers are buying, what they want and how to manage inventory so it arrives just in time for customers to take it home.”
At the center of this retail strategy: the best ways to use the data gathered through sensors (in stores) or online (through devices). This retail strategy is part of Intel’s growing focus on the so-called Internet of Things and how connected devices and the data they collect can be used.
Honeywell, Fujitsu and RetailNext helped Intel devise the Retail Platform, which is now available through distributors.
The platform consists of a multi-sensor product that takes in information featuring an integrated RFID reader and antenna designed to work in-store. There’s also a gateway that configures, controls and interacts with the sensors and processes data, as well as an open-source cloud analytics platform.
Krzanich’s appearance at the National Retail Federation conference is just a few months after his keynote at the Los Angeles Auto Show where he announced the chipmaker would invest $250 million over the next two years into autonomous vehicle technology.
The company is tackling such areas as autonomous driving and the Internet of Things as the future of computing as its traditional PC market continues to shrink.
The Portland Business Journal is a KGW News partner.
(© 2017 KGW)
