Apple
AAPL
, along with developer partner Rune Labs, has recently received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to use Apple Watch to monitor tremors and other common symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Apple Watch’s Parkinson monitoring was one of the many services offered by the company when it first launched ResearchKit back in 2015. The Parkinson monitoring service provided at that time was just to gather aggregated data by performing certain tests during specific periods to help researchers.
However, with the help of the movement disorder API developed by Apple, Rune Labs can use the Apple Watch to monitor tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson’s disease throughout a day and gather individual data.
This is the first time Apple Watch’s Parkinson monitoring will be used clinically as it will assist doctors in assessing a patient’s symptoms and providing better treatment. Currently, doctors have to collect data on a patient’s movements during a short clinical visit, which is not sufficient as symptoms vary with time. Apple Watch will provide doctors with a continuous stream of observations that can help them make proper diagnoses.
Apple Watch Health Features Helps Garner Market Share
Apple previewed watchOS 9 during the WWDC 2022, which heavily focused on health and fitness features.
During the event, Apple announced that the AFib history feature will be coming to Apple Watch with watchOS 9. Apple Watch provides notifications by identifying potential signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). Moreover, with the new AFib history feature, users can estimate how frequently one’s heart rhythm shows signs of AFib. If left untreated, this can result in a stroke.
Apple wants to develop its health and fitness features as services that can be used clinically, differentiating itself from competitors
Per
Verified Market Research
, the global smartwatch market is expected to reach $690.38 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 66.92% from 2019 to 2026.
Apple is the leading market shareholder in the smartwatch industry, but is facing stiff competition from
Garmin
GRMN
and
Alphabet
’s
GOOGL
Google.
Garmin has been able to benefit from the growing fitness business amid the pandemic with its different smartwatches to meet the diverse needs of outdoor hikers, swimmers as well as other health enthusiasts.
Alphabet also remains well-poised to rapidly penetrate the booming smartwatch space. The seamless synchronization of Wear OS with Google Fit and other health apps is a positive amidst the pandemic, which has increased health and fitness awareness.
Further, Apple is also expected to face stiff competition from
Meta Platforms
META
in the smartwatch industry as Meta is working on producing wrist-worn devices.
Meta has recently halted the development of a smartwatch with dual cameras and is instead working on other wrist- worn devices that can transmit nerve signals as digital commands, called electromyography. This will help in the development of metaverse. This feature separates Meta’s product from other smartwatches available in the industry and is expected to attract AR enthusiasts.
However, Apple Watch’s adoption rate continues to grow rapidly as more than two-thirds of customers who purchased Apple Watch during second quarter 2022, were first-time customers.
As a result, Wearables, Home and Accessories sales increased 12.4% year over year to $8.81 billion and accounted for 9.1% of total sales, which impacted shareholders’ wealth positively.
Shares of Apple, which currently carry Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), have outperformed the Zacks
Computer and Technology
sector year to date. Apple shares have lost 25.7% compared with the sector’s decline of 32.2%. You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
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