Apple Has No Plans For a Smart Ring

Apple has no plans to join the smart ring market, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, despite exploring the idea in the past. The company has no active development of a ring going on at this time and has no plans to launch a ring. Smart rings from companies like Oura offer features such as heart rate tracking, body temperature measurement, and sleep tracking, which are already available on the Apple Watch. If Apple released a smart ring, it would likely cannibalize Apple Watch sales. In February, Gurman reported that Apple's industrial team had suggested working on a smart ring as a lower-cost alternative to the Apple Watch, but executives weren't interested. A February rumor from Korean site Electronic Times claimed that Apple was speeding up development of a smart ring, but this may have been spurred by Samsung's Galaxy Ring. Samsung introduced the Galaxy Ring in July, a device that tracks movement, sleep, heart rate, and respiratory rate, and provides users with a daily sleep score and an energy score. Despite Samsung's release of the Galaxy Ring, Apple still has no concrete plans for a smart ring. Apple has filed patents for ring-like devices, but these patents don't necessarily mean a product will be launched. Some analysts, such as CCS Insight, still believe that Apple might launch a connected ring by 2026, but Gurman's report suggests otherwise.