Apple Watch Is Losing the Wrist to Screenless Wearables. Oura IPO Filing Shows Who Benefits.

Apple Watch is eleven years old and losing the wrist to a generation of screenless wearables you never take off.

The Apple Watch has generated an estimated $100 billion in lifetime sales and defined what a wearable health device could become, The Next Web reported. But it is not the device that will define the next cycle. U.S. purchases of fitness trackers grew 88% between 2024 and 2025, smart-ring purchases grew 195%, and the category winning that growth is rings and bands without screens — devices that track continuously because you forget they're there. Apple is not leading this cycle. Bloomberg reported this week that Apple Watch needs a shake-up, and The Next Web has the details on why that shake-up is overdue.

Apple's health division has had a difficult eighteen months. Former COO Jeff Williams, who long oversaw health initiatives, retired last year. Fitness+ leader Jay Blahnik is leaving following litigation tied to management conduct. Health and Apple Watch marketing chief Stan Ng recently retired. Another senior marketing manager, Eric Charles, departed this month. The Next Web also reported that an ambitious AI health coaching service codenamed Mulberry was recently scaled back after Cue took over the Apple health group. The Mulberry setback matters: if Apple's internal project for turning Apple Watch from a device into a coaching relationship is not ready, that is a multi-year opening for Oura and Whoop to own the subscription health-data habit before Apple re-enters.

Oura filed confidentially for an IPO on May 21, 2026, per BusinessWire, and the numbers in its own S-1 tell the story of why the Apple Watch's losing ground matters commercially. The ring maker was valued at $11 billion last October after a $900 million Series E, CNBC reported. According to Forbes, CEO Tom Hale said last September the company is on track for $1.5 billion in 2026 revenue — triple its 2024 sales — and expects to surpass five million paid members this quarter.

Five million members at $5.99 per month implies roughly $360 million in annual subscription revenue — less than a quarter of the $1.5 billion total. The rest is device sales. That gap is the IPO bet: investors are being asked to value Oura like a software company that happens to sell hardware, not a hardware company that added a subscription tier. The comparable wearable business with public financials is Fitbit, which Google acquired for roughly $2.1 billion in 2019 on trailing revenue that was largely device sales. Oura is asking public market investors to believe the ring generates a valuation premium to Fitbit's exit price on revenue projected two years out — while the dominant income stream is still selling rings, not recurring data subscriptions. At $11 billion on $1.5 billion projected 2026 revenue, Oura is pricing in a roughly 7x forward revenue multiple. Health-tech SaaS companies that have proven recurring-revenue models at scale typically trade at 5-10x revenue. The question the S-1 has not yet answered is whether ring subscriptions will be that kind of recurring revenue, or a higher-churn consumer device tier that depends on new hardware sales to sustain it.

CNBC also reported that Oura has sold over 5.5 million rings since launch, up from 2.5 million as of June 2024. The subscriber math and the growth rate are what make the valuation worth examining.

Whoop, with the same subscription-health-data model and a private valuation above $10 billion, has no public revenue disclosed. Oura is the first mover trying to price the behavior-change thesis directly: will ring owners keep paying $5.99 a month for recovery scores and sleep staging year after year, or does the subscription churn when the novelty fades?

The bullish case is that a ring you never take off builds a longitudinal health record no wrist-worn competitor can match. That data is what Oura's CEO Tom Hale has argued justifies the $11 billion valuation.

The skeptical case is that Oura is still a hardware company that sells a lot of rings. A ring company hitting $1.5 billion in revenue is impressive. It is not software-scale recurring. If the subscription thesis does not hold — if ring owners churn when the novelty fades and Oura cannot demonstrate a credible path to higher recurring revenue — that verdict does not stop at Oura's balance sheet. Whoop, which has no public filings and is valued above $10 billion on the same recurring-revenue theory, would face the same reckoning the next time it seeks a public exit.

Google will ship the Fitbit Air, a $99.99 no-display wristband, on May 26, WSJ reported. Whoop, a performance-band maker competing directly with Oura's high-end segment, raised $575 million in March and is valued at over $10 billion. The fitness-tracker market growing 88% in a year does not mean every participant wins. But it means the category is real, the habits are forming, and the window for Oura to price its IPO before Apple fixes its health division is open.

A founder who passed on Oura at $11 billion is betting that subscription fatigue outlasts the recovery-score habit. The ring does not care about the bet.