This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 11th, 2023. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Forget the new phones being announced — but do pay attention to the earbuds and the watches. The most interesting news from the event is Apple’s ever-growing ambitions in health.
When Apple’s CEO Tim Cook faces the world on Tuesday, he will present the company’s best iPhone yet. You can say that with confidence, since it happens every time at this occasion in September — every single year.
Apple needs to continuously release new hardware — the iPhone above all — to sustain its sales. This normally happens once a year as summer comes to a close, and sometimes there is a smaller update come spring. In addition, there are software upgrades that enable new functionality in existing devices.
Software has over time become increasingly important for Apple, as hardware sales have leveled off somewhat. Services such as Apple Music, Arcade (gaming), iCloud (cloud storage) — and the behemoth App Store — all belong to the segment loosely called “Services.” In the most recent quarter, these services accounted for around one quarter of total revenue.
It is also within services that you can see signs of where Apple is headed. That there will be a new iPhone with a slightly better camera is well known, and not something you can draw any particularly interesting conclusions from.
But at Apple’s developer conference WWDC in June this year, the company outlined news hinting at an ever-greater focus on an area that fits perfectly with its emphasis on privacy: health.
Walking alongside the Apple Park Pond — a pond located inside the company’s new, saucer-shaped headquarters — health chief Sumbul Ahmad Desai spoke about the new initiatives. “We are moving into two new areas that are always grounded in science with privacy at the core,” she explained, referring to mental health and eye health.
Apple’s new software is said to help users understand what contributes to their mental wellbeing, as well as reducing the risk of myopia — the nearsightedness that affects 30 percent of the population — which can be influenced by spending a lot of time looking at screens. An iPad can now alert users if a child is sitting too close to the screen, for example.
Those with an iPhone can also now choose to set it to different focus modes, so the phone does not disturb its owner when they are working, sleeping, or simply want a break from notifications.
The choice is no coincidence. Apple has selected two areas for which tech companies have previously drawn heavy criticism. The initiative thus becomes a kind of alibi for the responsibility the industry has been accused of shirking.
Mental health data is a particularly sensitive subject — something many people would likely prefer to share only with loved ones or professional care providers.
Here, Apple — whose multi-year commitment to protecting data and privacy is well established — can stake out a position that is hard for competitors to match. Nobody wants information about their mental state to feed targeted advertising, for example.
Apple’s commitment is not entirely altruistic, however. Having a service where one tracks one’s wellbeing is also a way of ensuring users do not switch to a different mobile platform. And one way to prevent myopia is to get plenty of daylight — something Apple measures with its watch, the Apple Watch. In the presentation, the watch is suggested as ideal for children, precisely to help ensure they are getting enough outdoor time during the day. So now even tech companies want children to go outside and play — provided they have a device on their wrist, of course.
Apple Watch, which is also being updated on Tuesday evening, has become the hub for a series of health initiatives in recent years. It can now perform basic ECG tests, measure nighttime body temperature, and track blood oxygen levels.
This makes the watch a kind of medical device that requires regulatory approval before it can be sold — a slow and administratively complex process, for understandable reasons, and not something a tech company would take on if it were not important. That Apple has chosen to do so anyway says something about its ambitions in this space.
There was a time when tech enthusiasts sat glued to Apple’s product launches. Now they have instead become part of the establishment, with all the predictability that brings.
The next iPhone 15 will likely feature a slightly better screen and a marginally smarter camera. The more interesting things lie in the smaller announcements. Are there new earbuds coming? And if so, will they be able to measure body temperature?
Slowly but surely, Apple is moving ever closer to the most intimate thing we have — our bodies and our wellbeing. And at the same time, the company is drawing yet another line against competitors such as Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and ByteDance (TikTok).
Pay particular attention to news about health and privacy. That is where you will find the clues to Apple’s strategy going forward.
