It probably won’t be long before they are forced to brick the O2 functionality of existing watches as well. Why don’t they just pay up?
The patent holder is a medical device company that is probably used to much more expensive price points than consumer tech. So having a $300 watch available that does o2 readings as much as a multi thousand dollar medical device is probably something they aren’t super thrilled about being in the market.
> He clashed with managers, demanded multimillion-dollar budgets and wanted the ability to hire his own engineers without approval, Hotelling said in a deposition that was part of a court fight between the companies. After weeks of discussions, Lamego left Apple. After his stint at Apple, Lamego ended up starting his own company, True Wearables. In 2016, he released a device called the Oxxiom, which he called the world’s first continuous and disposable blood-oxygen sensor. Masimo sued the start-up and won a court order blocking it from selling the product.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-late-night-ema...
It's not about just any blood oxigen measuring tech, there's various ways you can do it and apparently Apple's newest watch is implementing a very accurate technique developed by Masimo.
Those $20 devices exist because measuring blood oxygen accurately via light refracted through flesh is way easier than via light reflect off the flesh(especially as you move around), which is what this fight is all about.
>Seems odd that they couldn’t use their weight to secure a license.
Or, you know, pay for it? It's not like Apple is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.
I’m not sure it’s very technologically complex though. Seems like the patent just covers the positioning of a few sensors. It’s about as silly as allowing “multitouch” to be patented…
Link to their smartwatch: https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com/products/masimo-w1 It's actually in the same price range as the Apple Watch Series 9.
So their reluctance to license the patent to Apple may be probably partly about competing with Apple, partly about Apple's alleged bad-faith behavior in past dealings with them, and possibly also disinclination on the part of Apple to pay them for a license. But not about Apple's retail price point per unit.
Without a doubt. I would imagine the number of people that would actually choose to not buy an Apple Watch because it doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor is really really small. I also believe it’s likely that people considering upgrading an existing Apple Watch will not be deterred by the removal of the feature. My sense is that Apple felt that it had basically nothing to lose. They were going to incur some legal costs in this anyway, why not let that play out? Remove it if you lose the battle. If you lose out on maybe <500 watch sales no biggie, you still have the optics to your customer base that you exhausted all options to keep the feature.
Their devices tie in to hospital EMRs, do brain activity monitoring, and all sorts of other thing’s that aren’t in the same ballpark as an Apple Watch.
The actual case around the patent infringement is still going through the courts and if I understand correctly nothing has been decided with that.
I know a lot of people that got it for that specific feature. Not one of them got it for COVID or medical reasons.
There are huge communities of people that really like this feature. Notably, many people that do things at altitude.
I won't pretend that my narrow experience is a market maker, but I also won't generalize it to say something as broad as its a feature "nobody cares about now and moves zero units."
Try to think beyond your own experiences and worldview.
This is yet another case where it is easy to fall into the "product manager trap" -- that is: designing for "most people". The trap is to de-feature things where "most people" have only modest engagement, but a few (likely your most evangelical customers) care intensely about that feature. Don't fall into that trap. The goal is to create a feature collection of "the one thing" that each segment cares intensely about, not to create a basket of meh features that everyone finds meh.
Unfortunately, patents can entirely block the use of a technology, even if enormous sums of money are being offered to use the tech.
Was it wrong what Apple did? The moral position is irrelevant. We might as well argue over the color of the bikeshed.
Giants should get body slammed by the DOJ when they treat little companies like this.
Let this be a lesson to every startup: file patents!
That hardly makes sense since Masimo had to disclose that themselves when filling the patent for their “tech”