Honor's Smart Ring Is Coming for Oura, Too
Honor's says its smart ring, which is expected to have health tracking and AI for personalized insights, will launch later this year.
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Honor CEO George Zhao showing off a foldable phone from the company's growing portfolio.
After Samsung's surprise announcement of a Galaxy Ring this year, Chinese company Honor said it'll launch its own smart ring, called the Honor Ring, as early as this year.
"Internally, we have this kind of solution, now we are working on that part, so in the future you can have the Honor Ring," CEO George Zhao told CNBC, which first reported the news, at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday.
That future Zhao referred to is coming soon. Honor later told CNET its high-tech ring will be released before the end of 2024. The Chinese company's upcoming entry into the burgeoning smart ring market means consumers will have more choices in a wearables category dominated by a few key players. Celebrity favorite Oura is currently the most prominent player, with new entrant Evie, which focuses on women's health, vying to grab some market share.
Samsung's Galaxy Ring, which was physically shown off at MWC this week, is rumored to arrive as early as this year. Apple is also rumored to be experimenting with the idea of a smart ring, according to Bloomberg.
Chances are Honor's ring will follow the lead of smart rings already on the market, and track a wearer's heart rate, sleep statistics, temperature, exercise and fitness. The arrival of a smart ring would mark a significant expansion of Honor's wearable range, which currently consists of a few smartwatches and fitness trackers.
At MWC, Samsung disclosed that the Galaxy Ring will be able to track your sleep using four different metrics: heart rate, respiratory rate, night movement and sleep latency, as well as menstrual cycle and fertility tracking. Samsung said the Galaxy Ring will be part of a broader push of its app Samsung Health, in which the company intends to have AI analyze health data collected by the Ring or by Samsung's Galaxy Watch 6.
The Honor Ring will likely follow a similar approach, with Zhao citing AI as an essential tool for providing more personalized health tracking.
"This hardware capability will work together with AI-enabled apps [and] can help you make the professional training course tailored for you, because they studied your habits and health data to give you professional suggestions," Zhao told CNBC. "I think AI will transform this kind of applications."
