To evade the sales ban on both the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, Apple will begin selling those models without the blood oxygen feature tomorrow, January 18 at 6 a.m. Pacific Time. This change will be effective only in the United States.
The Apple Watch Series 6, introduced in September 2020, was the first model to have the blood oxygen feature, and it has been available in later generations, excluding the Apple Watch SE. Last month, however, Apple has been facing a patent dispute with the medical technology company Masimo, claiming that Apple has been infringing Masimo’s pulse oximetry patents. Consequently, the U.S. International Trade Commission ordered an import and sales ban on the aforementioned models late last month. Luckily, Apple was able to briefly pause the ban in time for New Year’s; however, the legal battle between Apple and Masimo is still far from over.
The ban is set to take place again tomorrow at 2 p.m. Pacific Time, but with perfect timing, Apple has announced that it has disabled the blood oxygen feature on new models sold in the U.S., which will allow the company to continue selling those models there for the foreseeable future without any legal issues. Even if you go to the web pages for both of the models, you’ll read at the top of the page, “Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 no longer include the blood oxygen feature.”
For the new models, whenever the user tries to access the Blood Oxygen app, they’ll be prompted that the app is no longer available, and they’ll be directed to the iPhone’s Health app. Apple will publish a support document that provides more details about this change.
Existing models sold up to today will still have the Blood Oxygen app enabled. In the meantime, Apple has been working on changes to the Blood Oxygen app’s algorithm. However, we’ll just have to wait and see when Apple will push those changes to Apple Watch users, and whether those changes will be enough to put the legal battle to rest.
