Masimo almost got the Apple Watch banned. Now it's helping build the future for Apple Watch competitors

Things are heating up in the health space; as always, it involves patents and licensing disputes.

The new Apple Watch Series 10 and other newer Apple Watches no longer have access to blood oxygen monitoring, as Apple has been prevented from using the tech. Why? Masimo sued Apple, claiming that it infringed on its patents around the technology used in SpO2 blood oxygen monitoring and asking it to pay for a license to use the technology.

Apple didn’t want to pay for the license, so it nixed the feature. Masimo even got an injunction granted that briefly banned sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, but in the end, Apple just disabled this feature on its most recent Apple Watch models.

A new partnership

The lawsuit continues and may become

far more complicated to resolve, or at least any settlement could be. Today, Masimo announced a partnership with Google and Qualcomm to build a new reference platform for future Wear OS devices.

Interestingly, this came on the same day Apple released WatchOS 11 for the Apple Watch. One of the key features is Sleep Apnea detection. Also interesting is that this feature traditionally requires a blood oxygen SpO2 sensor, which Apple can’t use because of the lawsuit mentioned above.

Apple says it is using complex algorithms and a large dataset to help predict when you may have sleep apnea. Still, ultimately, this is not a diagnosis but rather a helpful prompt to see a doctor and get tested for sleep apnea.

Who is Masimo?

Expect to hear a lot more about Masimo in the coming months and years. The company is currently fighting a hostile takeover by a private equity holding company, and this news is undoubtedly designed to give it a boost before its own shareholders vote in just three days.

Masimo is a health technology company that develops and manufactures noninvasive patient technologies. Founded 35 years ago in California, it employs more than 8,000 people worldwide. Its products are used in hospitals and at-home products in the medical space. As we’ve covered, it owns many patents on medical devices.

Presumably, this partnership also gives Google and other Wear OS OEMs a few benefits. Masimo explains further:

By incorporating Masimo’s breakthrough biosensing technologies – based on its decades of expertise developing industry-leading hospital monitoring solutions – and standardizing smartwatch devices using the Masimo reference platform, OEMs will be able to more efficiently build and bring high-performing Wear OS smartwatches to market. The robust reference platform is designed to support the fast-growing Wear OS ecosystem – including with a suite of health and wellness tracking tools that consumers can trust to provide accurate, reliable data, seamless integration with Android smartphones, and a high-quality, high-performance experience.

This effectively means that all Wear OS watches will eventually use the same set of sensors underneath the hood and some of the software in the app. However, there is one big question.

What about companies like Samsung?

Samsung Health is a fantastic health platform with over 65 million users. The news from the Masimo announcement doesn’t make it clear whether companies can build their own health apps if they use the underlying hardware reference platform or whether it’ll be a requirement of using the Wear OS reference platform.

This raises the big question: what does this mean for Samsung Health, the Galaxy Watch, and the Galaxy Ring? Only time will tell, but could we see Samsung abandon Wear OS and return to building its own platform? Would it even be wise for Google to try and force Samsung to use this reference platform, especially as Samsung presumably already has a patent licensing deal with Masimo?

Time will tell, but as mentioned above, things are heating up in the health space. I predict that we’ll see a lot of licensing agreements in the next year or two, especially as Health is the next big frontier that everyone is fighting over.

Check out this Bloomberg interview with Masimo CEO Joe Kiani for more!