Wearable Week in Review

Sleep well, Galaxy users

The FDA has approved a sleep apnea detection feature on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch devices, which Samsung notes is the first approval of its kind in the US market. The company plans to add the sleep apnea feature to Galaxy Watches in the third quarter of this year and the details will be available via the Samsung Health Monitor app. The feature looks for signs of moderate to severe Obstructive sleep apnea over a two-night monitoring period and users will need to track their sleep for more than four hours twice in a 10-day period for the feature to work. 

The Circana Take:

• Is the feature enough to persuade consumers to pick a Samsung device rather than an alternative? Possible… at least for those consumers within the Android phone ecosystem. After all, an estimated 25 percent of men and 10 percent of women are affected by sleep apnea according to the National Sleep Foundation.
• Is the feature enough to persuade consumers to switch from an Apple Watch to a Samsung? Almost certainly not. After all, Apple was slow to add any sleep tracking features and the lack of this feature had minimal impact on the company’s success in wearables. Having said that, this is a strong addition for Samsung and one that helps demonstrate how innovative the company can be when it comes to adding features to its smartwatches that provide useful functionality.