Forget about a ring, Apple should make a WHOOP competitor to further expand its wearable market.
Apple should seriously consider developing a smart ring to give its fitness-tracking wearables push new momentum and widen its market.
I think Apple should take a different approach.
Imagine an Apple Watch, but you take away the screen, buttons, speaker, and microphones, and you fill up that extra space with a higher capacity battery while making the device thinner. Currently the smallest, most modern Apple Watch (42mm Series 10) is 36mm wide, excluding the Digital Crown. With all those components removed, the form factor could morph back in time and be shrunken down just a bit to the size of the Series 3 Apple Watch at 33.3mm wide. This would still allow the small watch bands to fit (think 38mm, 40mm, 41mm, and the new 42mm bands).
You would only need one size since it’s a passive device with no screen. A thin device like that could act as a fashion piece like the WHOOP tries to do. Turn the front of the device into a polished steel surface with Apple’s classic trio of Silver, Slate, and Gold, and you have a piece of jewelry that can be swapped with any band of your choosing. If placed on an alternate site on the body, the smaller form factor would be easy to conceal.
Every single Apple Watch has been slightly taller than wide. To change the look of this new product, they can make it a perfect square at 33mm x 33mm, still leaving plenty of room to charge the device with the same Apple Watch charging puck. The device would have longer battery life, be more fashionable, and would not get banned from weddings.
Another critical feature? Giving it the ability to be worn on other parts of the body, such as your bicep, ankle, near your waist, etc. People are already doing it anyway, so why not make it more marketable (and accurate) for those of us who can’t wear a health device on our wrists all the time?
For my line of work in preparing sterile radioactive medications for patients, I’m not allowed to wear any jewelry in the lab, making the Apple Watch unusable for a decent portion of an 8-hour shift. It would be a huge deal for others in the healthcare field like myself who can track their health while working. This would apply to other occupations as well where the wrist is just too risky to put a $400 plus device.
The biggest hurdles to this form factor? Making sure the health data is accurate on alternate sites on the body, which could take years just based on how thorough Apple is when doing these health studies. They should pick alternative body sites that make the most sense and go all-in, even if it is just one additional body part like the upper arm or near your waist.
I think a WHOOP competitor that piggybacks off of the Apple Watch’s accessory lineup and distribution process gives Apple an advantage. It might seem redundant, but Apple has multiple form factors for each of its signature product categories, and this wouldn’t be any different. They should lean into their iconic squircle form factor instead of trying to start a whole new category.