Apple might be thinking about making its popular AirPods line more useful for health as well as entertainment.
Mark Gurman said in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg over the weekend that Apple would update AirPods in the next year or two to make them a health tool. This added to the idea that Apple might add health features to AirPods.
"It makes sense for Apple to do this. Mark N. Vena, president and chief analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, California, said, "Health has been a big part of their wearables."
He told TechNewsWorld, "I think they might start making AirPods more like smart hearing aids."
Julie Ask, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, said that the question is not if Apple will add health features to AirPods, but when.
She told TechNewsWorld that Apple is in it for the long haul. "They have always cared about health. And, like many companies that make consumer electronics, they will focus on and try to solve big problems where they think they can make a difference.
Market Opportunity
Apple has put a lot of money and time into helping people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels. There are a lot of ways that kind of application could be used. The U.S. Center for Disease Control says that 37.3 million people in the United States have diabetes, including 28.5 million adults who know they have the disease and 8.5 million who don't.
Apple could also make a lot of money in the market for hearing aids. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders says that about 15% of adults in the United States who are 18 or older, or 35.5 million people, have said they have trouble hearing. The institute thinks that hearing aids could help about 28 million adults.