Every Apple Watch since 2015 has been a rounded rectangle on a wrist. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now reports that Apple’s industrial design team has spent roughly the past year questioning whether that should remain true.
Writing in his Power On newsletter, Gurman describes a rethink he rates as comparable in scale to the iPhone’s move from slab to foldable. Nothing has been decided, and any change of this size takes years, but the range of concepts under evaluation is unusually wide for a product Apple has iterated on so conservatively.
What Reports Say
A screenless fitness tracker. The most concrete of the concepts, and the clearest response to the market. Whoop built a business on a band with no display, Oura on a ring, and Google has just launched the Fitbit Air. Apple has prototyped a device in the same category.
A round display. Explored, and the one that would most obviously break with a decade of design language. Gurman is blunt that it is unlikely to reach shops, so treat this as a design studio exercise rather than a roadmap item.
New screen types and sizes. Beyond the two case sizes Apple sells today.
New tiers at both ends. Premium models positioned above the Ultra and the Hermès editions, and cheaper options sitting below the SE. Apple wants to hold both ends of a market that has widened considerably around it.
Here is the part that makes this interesting. The Apple Watch is not failing. Sales rose 21 percent in the first quarter and it remains the best-selling smartwatch in the world.
The problem sits one level up. Apple’s Wearables, Home and Accessories division has struggled to produce meaningful growth for several years, and a category leader that cannot grow its segment is a category leader with a strategy problem. Buyers drifting towards rings and screenless bands are not necessarily leaving Apple’s ecosystem, but they are spending elsewhere.
Software
Apple also wants its wearables to lean harder on AI, alongside the AI-driven Siri overhaul now rolling out, with smarter health tracking attached.
The longer-term project is a rebuild of the Health app under Eddy Cue, and one detail there is telling: Cue is reportedly a user of both Whoop and Oura. The executive steering Apple’s health software is personally using the products eating into Apple’s category.
Nothing Changes This September
The Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 are expected alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and the foldable, and both continue the iterative pattern. Expect the first meaningful performance jump in several years, health and fitness upgrades, new colours and bands.
One possible flourish: the return of a ceramic case. Apple last offered one on the Series 2 in September 2016, when the ceramic Edition replaced the gold model and brought the top of the range down from thousands of dollars to $1,249. Gurman puts its return at either this year or 2027.
The radical stuff is further out, and by Gurman’s own caution, may never ship at all.