The Smart Ring Segment Is About To Be Blown Wide Open
There are a surprising number of manufacturers involved in the smart ring market. There’s Oura, Ultrahuman, Circular, Amazfit, McLear, and more. The thing is, not a single one of those names has reached “household” status (no shade to any of them). The closest might be Amazfit, but even then, it is still miles away from being recognized outside the smartwatch space.
Samsung is a completely different story. The South Korean company is a proper household name (with enough clout and moolah to be a worldwide partner for the Paris 2024 Olympics) and you’d likely be surprised if someone who didn’t just emerge from a cave says they have never heard of Samsung before. Samsung teased its Galaxy Ring earlier this year, signaling the first major brand to hop into the smart ring space.
This is bound to change a whole lot. First off, it is going to bring smart rings to the forefront for mainstream appreciation. That won’t only benefit Samsung, but it’ll certainly drive up sales in the segment since more people will know these wearables exist in the first place. It is also likely to be the push for other major manufacturers to get involved with smart rings. Who will it be next? OnePlus? Xiaomi? Apple? Who knows. All I know is that things are about to get rather wild over there.
Is Samsung Going To Do Anything Different With Its Ring Though?
As things stand, there’s not too much that is set in stone regarding the Samsung Galaxy Ring and the things that it will be able to do. For one, we know it is going to be coming in as many as 8 or 9 different sizes to fit as many fingers as possible. We can also expect water resistance and a huge slew of health-tracking features, especially as the latter is what such a wearable is all about.
However, a massive advantage that Samsung has is its pre-built Samsung Health ecosystem. This ring will sit nicely beside the Galaxy Watch lineup when it comes to being a health-focused wearable, though of course, without a display, it can’t help with your productivity in any way.
There are a few smartwatches out there that support payments, but not any of the major ones, to be honest. It’d be cool if Samsung could differentiate itself from the others by bringing support for payment via NFC, but rings from Oura, Ultrahuman, Circular, etc. don’t have this, so Samsung might not feel the need to bother with that. Generally, it remains to be seen whether Samsung will do anything vastly different with its ring, but even if it doesn’t, it is almost guaranteed to still have a majorly positive effect on the market.
