Oura CEO Tom Hale doesn't believe that Apple has plans to get into the smart ring market because an Apple-designed smart ring might undercut sales of the Apple Watch. [...] In an interview with
CBNC, Hale said that Apple is likely "unconvinced about the value of having a ring and watch together," and he said that while the company is likely keeping a close eye on both Oura and Samsung, an Apple smart ring probably won't happen because "it's hard to do this product category right."
There are many possible reasons, some good and some not, that Apple might not be making a smart ring, but "it'll undercut sales of an existing product" and "it's hard" are the only two that I'd be incredibly skeptical of.
If "it's hard to get right" were a reason for Apple to not even
try to build something, they wouldn't sell any products other than a monitor and some cables. They have quite literally spent
billions of dollars--considerably more than the total startup revenue of Oura plus the gross revenue of the company through its entire history--trying to get hard products right, and in some cases
failing then never releasing them. But they certainly
tried when they thought there was a good reason to build it.
And if cannibalizing the sales of existing products was a reason for Apple not to build things, I could name a dozen products they never would have built, including the iPhone itself. Or, y'know, spending
$3 billion to buy a headphone company that directly competed with a product they already made.
Besides, they wouldn't be spending a bunch of money to develop a $40 product that undercuts sales of a $400 product. They'd be building a ~$400 product that would potentially cannibalize sales of a ~$400 product
that your competitor is presumably already taking sales away from with their version of the new product. And of course they'd also be selling some additional units and expanding into a new market space, which is exactly what you'd want to do to expand your ecosystem if you think it's important--it makes good business sense even if you
did make your business decisions based on dumb reasons like protecting existing products.
If Tim Cook thinks that a smart ring is a product Apple
should sell, they'd almost certainly already be selling one, and there's no question they'd at least have one in the labs even if it wasn't ready to ship (or never did). Whatever the reason is they don't, I seriously doubt it's because they're trying to protect Apple Watch sales, or they think it's too hard to get right.
