Apple Redesigned its Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Feature to Circumvent ITC Import Ban

Apple announced today that it has redesigned the Blood Oxygen feature, which it had to disable on Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models sold in the US due to a patent dispute with medical technology company Masimo. The redesigned feature will be available on the aforementioned Apple Watch models sold in the US after January 17th, 2024, via a software update released later today.

Apple’s redesigned Blood Oxygen feature won’t be coming to Apple Watch models sold in the US before the International Trade Commission (ITC) import ban came into effect in January. These models never lost access to the feature, and neither did Apple Watch units purchased outside of the US. Apple’s redesigned Blood Oxygen feature, however, will work quite differently to circumvent the ITC import ban.

“Users with these models in the U.S. who currently do not have the Blood Oxygen feature will have access to the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature by updating their paired iPhone to iOS 18.6.1 and their Apple Watch to watchOS 11.6.1. Following this update, sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app. This update was enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling,” the company explained today.

This update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch models sold in the US comes just a month before the company’s usual September hardware event, where the Apple Watch Series 10 and likely other new models are expected to be revealed. It will be interesting to see if the latest models will also launch with this redesigned Blood Oxygen feature, unless Apple has found another solution that doesn’t infringe on patents from Masimo.