Samsung unveils wearable Galaxy Ring: What are its features?

Samsung's (005930.KS) showcased its latest wearable smart tech, the Galaxy Ring, at the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley joins the Live show to discuss the smart ring's health tracking features

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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: The potential brand new wearable from Samsung it's the Galaxy Ring which I guess is a competitor to the Oura Ring. What do we know about it?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. This is a new space for tech companies, these smart rings. And as you said, Oura is the chief company out there with one. At the moment, Samsung will be rolling out their Galaxy Ring in the future. They were showing it off as part of the mobile world Congress event in Barcelona. This is basically a health tracking gadget that it acts as a ring.

It can track you for multiple days. They haven't said exactly how long it will last. But the benefit of something like this is it's not as bulky or as attention grabbing as a watch. But it does provide you with the ability to track your health, your sleep habits, your heart rate, things along those lines. And it's on you for the whole day. I mean, it doesn't have to be charged too often. The Oura Ring can go several days without a charge. Can track all of this kind of information.

So this seems to be a way that more companies are going to be going. And oh, yeah, apparently according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple is investigating whether it wants to invest in a ring of its own. So it'll be interesting to see how the market responds to these. I actually saw an Oura Ring in the wild on the subway a few days ago. First time I saw one, but still it proves that people are out there buying them.

JOSH LIPTON: That's an interesting. You mentioned Gurman with that-- the idea here, Dan, that maybe Apple could get into it as well. Now Apple doesn't hint at its product pipeline, maybe some other tech companies do. But what do you say? If you were to bet, you think that could be coming?

DAN HOWLEY: It could be. Honestly, I mean, it feels as though it's something that they would explore. Apple explores all sorts of products and then just says, nah, we're not going to do it. The Apple Watch is the best selling smartwatch in the world. If they start to see maybe a divergence in the wearables category where people are starting to pick up steam. When it comes to purchasing these smart rings, then I would see Apple jumping in to the arena.

But right now it seems as though it's still a relatively niche market. And when it came to the Apple Watch itself, Fitbit already had a foothold in it. People had known about the technology. So it only made sense for them to get in on that action. It's done very well for them. The ring, it's still very hard to say whether or not Apple would do it. But like I said, they are looking into it according to this report. And it just doesn't necessarily mean they're going to put a product on the market.

JULIE HYMAN: All right, Dan. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It's interesting these companies wanting to get into wearables which hasn't been a huge as Dan alluded to. It's been a niche market. It hasn't been a huge market. And you look at some of the wrist wearables like a whoop strap, for example, which I feel like there have been different trends in going up and down in these things being popular.

JOSH LIPTON: And the other tough part is you move into health, which you can understand why so many tech companies want to do because that's an enormous market and an aging demographic. And it checks all the right boxes. But as you move into health, you often can run into patent trouble. You start designing. We've of course seen-- Apple has run into that exact issue, with Masimo. So the more you run into-- the more you want health, it just seems to be a place where you can find legal trouble and regulatory trouble very quickly as well.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. So we'll see if that becomes an issue with any of that.