Michael Liedtke, The Associated Press
17 minutes ago
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is on display during a media preview at the Samsung Galaxy Experience Space in New York, Tuesday, July 9, 2024. Samsung is decking out its wearable devices with the latest fashion in tech: artificial intelligence. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Samsung is decking out its wearable devices with the latest trend in tech: artificial intelligence.
The South Korean electronics giant revealed on Wednesday that both its first premium smartwatch and a smart ring, signalling its entry into a niche market, will be equipped with AI features that should help monitor and manage people’s health.
The $650 Galaxy Watch Ultra and $400 Galaxy Ring are an extension of the AI technology that Samsung made a major push into when it introduced its first smartphone six months ago. The high-end smartwatches cost nearly twice as much as Samsung’s latest standard model, the $350 Galaxy Watch 7.
The trend of embedding AI in the devices that matter to people’s lives is accelerating: The technology is already in smartphones made by Samsung’s rivals Google and Apple, and in the latest PCs running Microsoft’s Windows software.
The AI in Samsung’s new luxury watches and rings is focused on improving and maintaining personal health, the primary reason most people buy wearable technology.
Both Samsung’s smartwatch and ring will use AI to better analyze biometric data collected from the wearer and provide a customized assessment of their health through an “Energy Score,” which will rate them on a scale of 1 to 100 and offer recommendations, much like a virtual fitness coach. Most of the information will be collected on the device itself, but some data will need to be analyzed in data centers, whose security Samsung likens to a virtual Fort Knox.
This premium phone is one of the more advanced of Samsung’s latest wearable devices, and it can do some things the Galaxy Ring can’t, like alert you for sleep apnea, but the ring needs to be charged less frequently and has a battery that lasts for six to seven days before needing to be recharged.
But smartwatches are also a much more competitive market, currently led by Apple, which has been focusing on health features since entering the market a decade ago, with more than 60 million people already using the Samsung Health app that works with its smartwatches.
Health benefits associated with wearable technology are encouraging more people to buy smartwatches, and research firm Gartner predicts that global sales of the devices will approach $29 billion this year. That means roughly 164 million new smartwatches will be strapped to wrists this year, with Gartner predicting annual sales will rise to 195 million by 2028.
While Samsung doesn’t face much competition for now, it’s likely to face further challenges in the smart ring market, a sector that has so far been shaped by startups like Oura and RingConn, but which have so far failed to make a big impact.
In a recent overview of the wearable technology market, Gartner said, “Smart rings are still an emerging category with no exclusive use cases and are unlikely to grow beyond a niche market through 2028.”
The company expects the smaller segment, which includes smart rings, to generate $2.4 billion in sales this year, eventually growing to about $4.6 billion in 2028.
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring comes in nine different sizes, but it only runs on Google’s Android operating system, making it unavailable to most affluent iPhone-owning consumers interested in trying new tech like the Galaxy Ring.
Samsung is also trying its latest move to get more people to buy its foldable smartphones, which have two display screens that hinge together to form a pseudo-tablet. It’s a concept Samsung has been pushing since 2019 with little success, but the company continues to update its devices with cameras and AI features to satisfy a niche market. The next-generation model, the Galaxy Z Fold 6, will sell for $1,899.99.
