TL;DRApple 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.
