There will never be an Apple Ring, says rival with crossed fingers

Oh, just bring out a ring already. Apple Ring has been rumored for years, but in the last few months we have had absolutely certain claim that the project is dead. But that claim was followed only hours later by another one saying that Apple's smart ring would be out in 2026.

Now Tom Hale, CEO of the Oura Ring company, has told CNBC that it won't happen. For one thing, an Apple Ring would undercut the Apple Watch, and for another, making smart rings is so hard that Apple can't just walk in and do it.

"I think they [Apple] are unconvinced about the value of having a ring and a watch together and they're not interested in undercutting the Apple Watch as a business," said Hale during the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. "I think they're probably keeping a close eye on Samsung and a close eye on us, but it's hard to do this product category right."

That last point should give pause to anyone with a long enough memory. It's like an echo of what smartphone companies like Palm, Inc, were saying before Apple launched the iPhone.

"We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," said Palm chief executive Ed Colligan in 2006. "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.''

The next year, Apple launched the iPhone, and the rest is business history. Colligan left Palm in 2009, and Palm itself faded away when HP acquired it in 2010.

So Hale does not have history and precedent on his side, but he also seems to be assuming Apple hasn't done any work yet. But we know it has because the many patents Apple has either applied for or also had granted.

One of those was called "Devices and methods for a ring computing device," which was a patent application in 2015. A continuation patent on the same idea was granted in 2019.

So while we may never know how seriously Apple takes a smart ring, nor how much of its resources into the idea, we know it's been working on one for almost a decade.

True, it worked at least as long on the Apple Car before reportedly killing that off. Hale is right that Apple will want both the technology and the reasonable belief of success before it launches anything.

But Hale also appears to be counting on the idea that the Apple Ring will compete with the Apple Watch. He specifically discounts the notion that Apple would have a ring and a watch working together.

Yet all of Apple's devices benefit from being part of the company's ecosystem. Everything works with everything else, and nobody believed that the Apple Watch would compete with the iPhone.

And Apple is the company that intentionally destroyed its enormously successful iPod by launching the iPhone. By linking with the Apple Watch, the Apple Ring may be an accessory to an accessory, but there's no reason to assume Apple won't do it.