Those cameras were developed by an Israeli startup that Intel bought a few years ago (Omek Interactive). Making these sensor low power could enable devices to have 3D reconstruction and tracking. This opens the door for more robust AR/VR applications and cheap devices for robotics. Not only that Intel is in a good position to sell/produce those sensors, but they probably sense that it could be a good market to conquer.

That's half of it. The other half is that Intel has pushed the RealSense API as something that is independent of the exact technology used.

So this could be something that uses a projected dot matrix like the Xbox 360 Kinect or a time-of-flight sensor like the Xbox One Kinect or multiple conventional cameras or...

There are many neat things you could do with depth cameras in principle, in particular make computers into "sessile robots" that appear to understand the space we live in the same way we do. Unfortunately the market hasn't made this into reality yet.

Hoping that it's one of those things that will soon be in every phone. Like modems.

Some of the older RealSense depth cameras are already integrated in laptops and tablets