To close watchers of the company, updates to the Apple Watch hardware and its operating system are arguably more interesting than changes to the iPhone. The newest version of the software can tell whether wearers are washing their hands for the recommended 20 seconds and can track sleeping patterns.
Others in recent years include monitoring unhealthy noise levels, detecting unusual heartbeats, and calling emergency services if an elderly wearer falls. The device now appears to be in the similar phase of its evolution to where the iPhone was almost a decade ago: popular enough to have mass interest, but not yet at the point where it has been so refined that updates are incremental.
And while the iPhone becoming ubiquitous paved the way for Apple’s current push into digital services such as its lucrative App Store, the company’s smartwatch is on a similar path with people’s health.
An Apple a day keeps the doc away
At Apple’s size (even after the recent slump in tech shares, the company is worth almost $2 trillion) there are precious few industries that are so large that entering them significantly moves the company’s revenue dial. Health is one of them. In the US, spending on healthcare was $3.6 trillion (£2.8 trillion) in 2018, more than 17pc of GDP. America is an outlier, but ageing populations and greater awareness means costs are rising around the world.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said that in the long term, the company’s biggest contribution to mankind will be about health. That sounds better than selling electronics, so take it with a pinch of salt, but it speaks to the company’s ambition.
If this is the plan, the Apple Watch will be central to it. As a wearable device, it is much more capable of tracking vital signs than the company’s other gadgets. The miniaturisation of sensors and improved detection algorithms mean that the existing capabilities of the watch, such as heart rate monitoring, could be complemented by blood pressure or oxygen monitoring. Hints at a fitness-related subscription service have also been discovered in the code to Apple’s forthcoming software. The company has been encouraging healthcare providers to make detailed medical records available to download on to an iPhone.