With less than a week from a ban on sales for the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, company engineers are working around the clock to save the latest wearables from being taken off the shelves through a variety of means, reports Bloomberg.
Software engineers in Cupertino are hard at work retooling the algorithms for determining blood oxygen and displaying those statistics to users. This comes after the company announced Monday it would pull the latest Apple Watch devices from sale to preemptively comply with the U.S. International Trade Commission’s order to do so. Officials for health technology company Masimo claim the current execution of the blood oxygen feature violates their patents.
Masimo representatives say software changes will not settle the dispute and that the hardware itself must be adjusted. The patents in question relate specifically to the way the device sends light through the skin to determine the amount of oxygen present in the wearer’s blood. Nonetheless, Apple officials believe the software changes will be enough to put the latest Apple Watch models back up for sale.
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A representative for Apple also said the company officials are working with U.S. customs officials on a workaround, as the official ban from the ITC takes the form of a restriction on imports from Apple’s overseas suppliers and factories. This solution may also enable the product to be put back onto the market.
Apple devices have previously been banned in some countries over other legal disputes, but this is the first time it has happened to such a large part of its business within the United States. The ban comes just a day before the Christmas holiday, which may prevent it from interfering with last-minute holiday shopping, but could interfere with after-Christmas purchases following gift exchanges and returns.
The ban still has time to get overturned. The ruling still falls within the Presidential Review Period, which will not end until December 25. This means President Biden could choose to overturn the ban, reenabling sales of the product. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai is carefully reviewing the dispute, a Biden Administration official said.
Apple executives do not seem to count on this. They plan to halt online sales of the affected Apple Watch models on Thursday before halting all physical sales within Apple retail stores by Sunday. Workers at the stores are already receiving updated posters for the Apple Watch that only promote the product line generally, rather than highlight the two most recent models.
The ban only applies to Apple’s own retail and online stores, so other retailers within the United States will be allowed to continue to sell the device. Representatives for Walmart and Best Buy say they do not plan to withhold the product from sale. The ban does not apply to the latest Apple Watch SE, as it does not have the Blood Oxygen app; however, it will also block sales of refurbished Apple Watch Series 8 devices.
