Google teams up with Apple’s nemesis to add health upgrades to Wear OS watches

Masimo is the company that filed a lawsuit against Apple and asked for a full import ban of the Apple Watch. The US-based company wanted Apple to pay to license the blood oxygen tracking technology embedded into its Apple Watch.

That led to a temporary hold on Apple Watch sales, but instead of paying for the licensing deal, Apple decided to simply disable the blood oxygen tracking on all its watches.

Today, Masimo announced that it has partnered with Google to “develop a new reference platform for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) building Wear OS smartwatches.”

Basically, Google is licensing the blood oxygen tracking technology that Apple decided to skip, along with a bunch of other health-related features. According to Masimo, the new reference platform was specifically designed to support the Wear OS ecosystem, including a suite of health and wellness tracking tools that will provide accurate, reliable data, seamless integration with Android phone, and a smooth, high-performance experience.

Joe Kiani, Founder and CEO of Masimo, said that the company’s engineers “are optimizing the ‘guts’ of the smartwatch, and working with Google to offer OEMs an incredible Wear OS smartwatch solution.” Kiani went on to add that that they “expect this new wearable platform to supercharge smartwatch OEMs’ abilities to create innovative, competitive, and truly compelling Wear OS smartwatches for consumers everywhere.”

Masimo’s new platform will be compatible with existing Google apps and services created for the Wear OS platform. All OEMs who decided to adopt Masimo’s platform will have creative control over the appearance of the user interface and the exterior design.