Apple is selling watches without blood-oxygen feature to avoid ban
Apple says it will disable a blood-oxygen monitoring feature on its two most popular watches in the U.S. beginning Thursday to comply with a court-ordered revival of a sales ban stemming from a patent dispute.
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TechTranscript
00:00 Apple is disabling the blood oxygen monitoring feature on two of its watches in the US starting Thursday.
00:05 In October, the US International Trade Commission ruled that the blood oxygen sensor on two Apple Watch models
00:10 infringed on patents from Massimo, a medical tech company.
00:13 So, Apple has been locked in a patent dispute over the technology.
00:16 The decision to turn off the blood oxygen sensor comes after a federal appeals court declined to extend the order
00:21 that allowed the watches to stay on shelves during the technology rights battle.
00:24 The two models affected are the Series 9 and Ultra 2.
00:27 Apple is confident that it will win the appeal of the ITC ruling,
00:30 so they are continuing to sell the models with the blood oxygen icon, but the feature will be disabled.
00:35 Existing users can still use the sensor, and watches sold outside of the US are unaffected.
00:40 Analysts estimate Apple Watch sales account for about $18 billion in annual revenue for the company.