The Apple Watch is 11 years old and losing momentum. Screenless rivals are winning the next phase.
TL;DR
Apple Watch innovation has stalled as Whoop, Oura, and Fitbit Air redefine wearables. Key health execs are leaving. Oura has filed for IPO.
The Apple Watch generated an estimated $100 billion in lifetime sales and transformed the smartwatch market. Eleven years after launch, innovation has slowed and the lineup is losing momentum. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple risks falling behind in the next phase of the industry it helped create.
Consumer preferences are shifting away from screen-heavy devices. Whoop, Oura, and Google’s $100 Fitbit Air have built multibillion-dollar businesses around screenless bands and rings that emphasise recovery, sleep, and passive health monitoring. A growing number of consumers no longer want another screen competing for their attention.
Apple’s Health app is part of the problem. Despite years of investment, it remains cluttered, clinical, and poor at producing actionable insights. Gurman writes that it “often feels less like a modern consumer platform and more like the experience of reviewing charts in a waiting room.” Competing apps from Whoop and Oura are “in a different league.”
Apple’s Eddy Cue, who personally uses both Oura and Whoop, has pushed internally for broader changes to the health strategy. An ambitious AI health coaching service codenamed Mulberry was recently scaled back after Cue took over Apple’s health group. Gurman does not expect features from that project to launch until later in the iOS 27 update cycle.
The leadership turbulence is significant. Former COO Jeff Williams, who long oversaw health initiatives, retired last year. Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO in September. Fitness+ leader Jay Blahnik is leaving following litigation tied to management conduct.
Health and Apple Watch marketing chief Stan Ng recently retired. Another senior marketing manager, Eric Charles, departed this month. Apple has also steadily lost health and hardware talent to Oura. The brain drain is real.
Incoming CEO John Ternus wants to keep health central to Apple’s future. He has promised new services combining hardware and AI. But the leadership turnover raises questions about the company’s urgency around health technology.
This year’s watchOS 27 will focus on stability and smaller refinements rather than major new capabilities. Improvements to heart-rate tracking are coming. The update is incremental, not transformational.
Apple is increasingly relying on promotions to drive Apple Watch sales. Amazon and Best Buy have offered unusually aggressive discounts. Apple added the watch to its education store with direct discounts for the first time. These are signals rarely seen with Apple hardware.
The glucose monitoring project could be the breakthrough. First conceived during the Steve Jobs era, it aims to detect elevated blood sugar without finger pricks. Oversight recently shifted from platform architecture chief Tim Millet to Zongjian Chen, the engineering leader known internally as someone who delivers.
The transition is viewed by some as a sign the work is finally progressing toward a consumer-grade offering. But Apple’s progress in health has been hindered by workplace turmoil, delays, caution, and incrementalism. The same institutional risk aversion that caused Apple to miss generative AI is showing up in wearables.
Apple’s iOS 27 will include several AI features including natural language in the Shortcuts app, wallpaper creation via Image Playground, and a new grammar checker. The revamped Siri app with auto-deleting chats is the headline consumer AI feature. But none of these directly address the health and wearables gap.
Oura, the Finnish smart ring maker, has filed confidentially for a US initial public offering. Gurman notes that Apple “probably should have acquired” Oura years ago. The company that Apple could have bought is now preparing to go public as a competitor.
The wearables market is expanding in multiple directions simultaneously. Meta is selling seven million Ray-Ban smart glasses a year. Apple is testing smart glasses for 2027. Google is preparing Android XR glasses with Samsung. The competition is no longer just about the wrist.
Apple also announced that iOS 27 will support AirPlay alternatives by default to meet EU Digital Markets Act requirements. Users will be able to set Google Cast or other services as their default streaming solution. The AirPods settings panel is getting a significant overhaul as well.
Cook has said he wants Apple to be remembered for its contributions to healthcare. The company that built the most successful smartwatch in history now needs to decide whether it will also build the screenless, AI-powered health device that the market is moving toward. If it does not, Whoop, Oura, and Google already will have.
