Rendering of a Possible Apple Ring
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Last updated 3 days ago
The CEO of smart ring company Oura has detailed the reasons why there shouldn't be an Apple Ring, but it appears he hopes that Apple will listen.
Oh, just release the ring already. The Apple Ring has been rumored for years, but in the last few months, we’ve gotten a definitive statement that the project is dead. But that statement was followed just hours later by another that said Apple’s smart ring would launch in 2026.
Now Tom Hale, CEO of Oura Ring, has told CNBC that’s not going to happen. First, the Apple Ring would disrupt the Apple Watch, and second, making smart rings is so difficult that Apple can’t just come along and do it.
“I think they [Apple] aren’t convinced of the value of the ring and the watch together, and they’re not interested in disrupting the Apple Watch as a business,” Hale said during Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. “I think they’re probably looking at Samsung and us very closely, but it’s hard to get this category right.”
That last point should give pause to anyone with a long memory. It’s an echo of what smartphone companies like Palm, Inc. were saying before Apple released the iPhone.
“We studied and struggled for years trying to figure out how to make a decent phone,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in 2006. “The PC guys aren’t going to figure it out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
The next year, Apple released the iPhone, and the rest is business history. Colligan left Palm in 2009, and Palm itself disappeared when HP acquired it in 2010.
So Hale has no history or precedent on his side, but he also seems to be assuming that Apple hasn’t done anything yet. But we know that’s true because Apple has applied for or issued numerous patents.
One of them was called “Devices and Methods for a Ring Computing Device,” and it was filed for a patent in 2015. An additional patent for the same idea was issued in 2019.
So while we may never know how serious Apple is about a smart ring or how many resources it’s pouring into the idea, we do know that it’s been working on it for nearly a decade.
True, it worked on the Apple Car just as hard before it reportedly killed it. Hale is right that Apple will want to have both the technology and a reasonable belief in its success before it releases anything.
But Hale also seems to be counting on the idea that the Apple Ring will compete with the Apple Watch. He specifically shoots down the idea of Apple having a ring and a watch that work together.
Still, all of Apple’s devices benefit from being part of the company’s ecosystem. Everything works with everything else, and no one believed the Apple Watch would compete with the iPhone.
And Apple is the company that intentionally killed its hugely successful iPod by releasing the iPhone. With its ties to the Apple Watch, the Apple Ring could become an accessory to an accessory, but there's no reason to believe Apple won't.
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