OURA Ring Lists On Amazon For First Time
This move by Oura interested me as the company has previously been quite selective about which retail outlets sell its product and generally Oura’s focus was on more profitable direct-to-consumer sales. There are the likes of Collagerie and Best Buy who sell the rings but they appear to be more the exception than the rule.
Anyway, Amazon.com clearly offers a significant captive customer base and I’m sure Oura has weighed up the pros & cons of cannibalising their commission-free direct sales against selling to more people on Amazon albeit at a higher cost of sale.
More: Oura Ring from $299
When mass market behemoth Samsung and also chinese Xiamoi (through there Amazfit brand) annouce ring wearables, Oura has to do something to increase their brand awareness as those will flood all channels with ads, sell it in bundles with their phones, watches, headphones and are easily available in every downtown shopping area of the world.
yes, i think you are right (Samsung/Apple too), interesting times ahead over the next 2 years in the ring market i think.
i’ve not given it too much thought tho. maybe I should !
I think it’s save to assume that neither will have Oura’s sport scientifical depth.
I would think that the ring market will be split between in-depth offers like Oura, maybe Ultrahuman (didn’t really look into their offering TBH) and let say more superficial mass market offers (more like me-too-products than actually wokring on something unique like Oura) from Samsung and the likes.
Maybe Apple will sit in-between with better more sophisticated hardware aka sensors that with 3rd party apps will offer more depth similar to Oura.
Wild highly uneducated guess from a hobbyist that lacks you guys’ market insight though. 😉
afaik the science exists and is ‘done’ in terms of the methods that need to be followed (I talk with ex-oura guys regularly) however the new tech components would need validation. actually maybe that’s not so hard???
the general issue i have is that companies ‘invent’ composite metrics (ie I’m especially thinking Garmin Readiness here) that simply are not based on science themselves
samsung/apple will be able to afford the science which takes time to produce and which adds further costs to do properly. so yes i suspect the mass-market new entrants will start with something not much more than MVP