Oura ring's monopoly may be coming to an end
Are we on the cusp of a flood of new smart rings?
I've written before about how I've been wearing an Oura ring daily for over three years. As far as fitness trackers go, it's a pretty unique little product. While there are plenty of options when it comes to smartwatches or fitness bands, the ring form factor has been pretty much dominated by Oura.
Why is Oura the only ring in town?
I'm sure there are some patents that Oura has, but I've been surprised about the lack of competition. I personally find the smart ring to be the ultimate form factor. It's light, it's comfortable, it doesn't need to be charged every day. It honestly just fits seamlessly in the background of your life more than almost any other device.
And don't get me wrong, I've been mostly pleased with my Oura ring experience. I'm not saying that I'm looking for a replacement. But this week there were rumblings about Samsung potentially announcing a new ring-like wearable smart device at their upcoming Unpacked event.
Why is this important?
Well if you look at consumer trends, there is typically an order of imitation. Samsung will likely give this smart ring a shot and if it does well, you'll see rival entrants coming from the likes of Google and Apple shortly. I'm actually kinda surprised that Apple wasn't first to this trend years ago. Doesn't a smart ring seem like something the late Steve Jobs would have been very excited about? Apple design loves simplicity and symmetry and a product like a ring just fits that model perfectly. Hell, even the Apple campus in Cupertino is shaped like a ring.
So what will the new Samsung ring look like? Well, my guess is that it will be round. I'm really going out on a limb here right? It'll have the typical Samsung design language. It'll likely have a glossy metal coating similar to the frame of their foldable phones or the exterior of their earbuds. And it will likely have all the same tracking technology found in their smart watches. But if they can make the ring comfortable and reasonably priced, I think they could have a real hit on their hands. To me, a ring is the type of wearable even a “non-techy” person could wear. The Oura ring is still a bit nerdy and hasn’t quite figured out their user interface. But if Samsung made a simple ring that older folks could just wear and get a weekly email that shared useful health data, I think they’d be into that.
Lookout Oura
And that leads me back to Oura. Should they be scared about the competition? Yeah, I would say so. I'm not sure you'd call Oura ring wearers a rabid fan base but I have gotten plenty of questions from folks who recognize it when I'm wearing it. I think more people have seen the marketing efforts for Oura and are intrigued by it, but I'd have to guess that the sales numbers aren't anywhere close to what Samsung sees with their current wearable tech.
The big question is whether Samsung will require some sort of premium subscription or upsell charge when buying the ring. I saw one commenter somewhat jokingly asking if they'd sell a version of their ring with an LTE data connection. It's actually a fair question. If they follow the smart watch model, they could have a wifi and LTE version. It might seem superfluous, but I think we said that when the first smartwatch had its own internet connection independent of a phone.
Oura does currently charge for a premium subscription after it was free (after the upfront purchase of the $300ish ring) for the first few years. I opted into purchasing a lifetime subscription when I upgraded my ring and I'm pretty happy with that decision. This would also be a great time to say that you can get a discount if you buy an Oura ring with my link (but they are not paying me to write this!) Lifetime subscriptions are almost always worth the money in my opinion. I imagine Samsung will offer a free service to start and then later maybe bundle premium health data into some other subscription. If Apple and Google get into the ring game, they'll likely follow suit and add functionality to the Apple Health and Google/Fitbit ecosystem for a small monthly fee.
How can Samsung improve the smart ring?
Maybe Samsung can really move this product category forward. There are certainly a lot of trade offs required when you're making a product so small and so light to be comfortably worn on a finger 24/7 but you also want to pack it with all the latest technology.
I've often wondered if Oura could fit a tiny vibration motor into their ring. I've long been a fan of vibrating watch alarms that don't disturb your sleeping partner. Since Oura is already tracking your sleep, a small buzz on your finger to wake you up at the perfect point in your sleep cycle would be amazing. Of course, it would also impact battery life, likely make the ring larger and heavier, and would frankly be a feat of engineering.
How else could a smart ring be improved? Could Samsung throw some sort of tiny screen on it? I actually think a tiny e-ink display on the top of a ring that showed battery level, steps, or minor notifications could be cool. Of course, if it's e-ink it would likely not drain much of the battery, and could easily be shut off to appear virtually invisible.
Conclusion
Who knows, I could be getting ahead of myself here. Maybe this Samsung product never sees the light of day. Maybe there is a reason why people buy more Apple Watches than Oura rings. There just may not be a huge demand for a screenless health monitor on your finger. At least I'm really excited to see where this product category goes in the next few months. And I think that Oura better be ready to unleash some new killer features if they want to remain relevant.
Anyone else interested in some new smart rings?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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