The Apple Watch at 11: Losing Momentum to Screenless Rivals
The Apple Watch, turning 11 this year, is experiencing a slowdown in innovation as competitors without screens gain traction. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple risks falling behind in the evolving wearables market.
Consumer preferences are shifting away from devices with heavy screen focus. Brands like Whoop, Oura, and Fitbit Air have built successful businesses around screenless bands and rings that emphasize recovery, sleep, and passive health monitoring, appealing to a growing audience who desire less digital clutter in their lives.
Apple’s Health app, despite significant investment over the years, remains cluttered, clinical, and ineffective at delivering actionable insights. Competing apps from Whoop and Oura are considered vastly superior. Apple’s Eddy Cue, himself a user of both Oura and Whoop, has advocated for changes to their health strategy internally. A previously ambitious AI health coaching service codenamed Mulberry was scaled back.
The company has experienced notable leadership turbulence in recent times:
- Jeff Williams, former COO and long-time health initiatives overseer, retired last year.
- Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO in September.
- Jay Blahnik, Fitness+ leader, left following litigation related to management conduct.
- Stan Ng, Health and Apple Watch marketing chief, retired recently.
- Eric Charles, another senior marketing manager, departed this month.
- Apple has also lost talent to Oura in health and hardware departments.
John Ternus, incoming CEO, aims to keep health central to Apple’s future, promising new services combining hardware and AI. However, the leadership turnover raises doubts about Apple’s urgency regarding health technology development.
This year’s watchOS 27 update will focus on stability and smaller refinements rather than major new features, with improvements to heart-rate tracking being among them.
Apple is increasingly relying on promotions to drive Apple Watch sales, offering unusually aggressive discounts through retailers like Amazon and Best Buy.
One potential game-changer could be glucose monitoring, a project first conceived during the Steve Jobs era. It aims to detect elevated blood sugar without finger pricks. Recent shifts in leadership for this project suggest it might finally be progressing toward consumer availability, though Apple’s progress has been hindered by internal turmoil, delays, caution, and incrementalism.