Apple has announced that the Apple Watch Series 10 will not include blood oxygen monitoring functionality for models sold in the United States. This decision is directly related to an ongoing patent dispute with medical device company Masimo.
The blood oxygen feature, first introduced with the Apple Watch Series 6, has been a key health monitoring capability for the device. But, due to legal challenges, Apple was forced to disable this feature on the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in late 2023.
When the rest of the world will have access to blood oxygen monitoring on the new Series 10, US customers will miss out on this feature. For now, it is unclear whether the removal is a hardware change or simply disabled via software, with more details expected once teardown experts examine the device. The personally I believe it’s the latter.
Apple has been fighting Masimo’s lawsuit, which alleges patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets related to pulse oximetry technology. The dispute has led to import bans and temporary sales halts for certain Apple Watch models in the US.
Apple has revealed other health features for the Series 10, mostly focussing on sleep apnea detection. As of now the company continues to pursue legal and technical options to bring back the remaining functionality to US customers, their biggest market.
More here.