Google phone cameras will read heart, breathing rates with AI help

Cameras on Google Pixel smartphones will be able to measure heart and breathing rates starting next month, in one of the first applications of Alphabet Inc's artificial intelligence technology to its wellness services.

Health programs available on Google Play's store and Apple Inc's App Store for years have provided the same functionality. But a study in 2017 found accuracy varied and adoption of the apps remains low.

Google Health leaders told reporters earlier this week they had advanced the AI powering the measurements and plan to detail its method and clinical trial in an academic paper in the coming weeks. The company expects to roll out the feature to other Android smartphones at an unspecified time, it said in a blog post on Thursday, but plans for iPhones are unclear.

Apple's Watch, Google's Fitbit and other wearables have greatly expanded the reach of continuous heart rate sensing technologies to a much larger population.

The smartphone camera approach is more ad hoc - users who want to take a pulse place their finger over the lens, which catches subtle color changes that correspond to blood flow. Respiration is calculated from video of upper torso movements.

Google Health product manager Jack Po said that the company wanted to give an alternative to manual pulse checks for smartphone owners who only want to monitor their condition occasionally but cannot afford a wearable.

Po said the technology, which can mistake heart rates by about 2 percent, requires further testing before it could be used in medical settings.

The new feature will be available as an update to the Google Fit app.

Google consolidated its health services about two years ago, aiming to better compete with Apple, Samsung Electronics Co and other mobile technology companies that have invested heavily in marketing wellness offerings.

-reuters-

Google taps fitness tracker market with $2.1-B bid for Fitbit

Alphabet Inc.-owned Google will buy Fitbit Inc for $2.1 billion, as the biggest Web search company looks to take on Apple and Samsung in the crowded market for fitness trackers and smart watches.

Google said on Friday that it sees an opportunity to introduce its own wearable devices and invest more in digital health. The purchase will also bring a rich trove of health data gathered by millions of Fitbit's devices.

Fitbit's fitness trackers and other devices monitor users' daily steps, calories burned and distance traveled. They also measure floors climbed, sleep duration and quality, and heart rate.

Fitbit's share of the fitness tracking market has been threatened by deeper-pocketed companies such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., as well as cheaper offerings from China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xiaomi Corp.

"We believe Google is a natural fit. The deep health and fitness data, coupled with the 28 million active users on the Fitbit platform, offer a tremendous value," Craig Hallum analysts wrote in a note. Xiaomi dominates the global wearables market, with a 17.3% market share in the second quarter of 2019, followed by Apple. Fitbit owns 10% of the market, according to data from market research firm International Data Corp.

Reuters first reported the deal on Monday.

HEALTH DATA

Fitbit, which helped pioneer the wearable devices craze, has been partnering with health insurers and has been making tuck-in acquisitions in the healthcare market, as part of efforts to diversify its revenue stream. Analysts have said that much of the company's value may now lie in its health data.

U.S. antitrust regulators have little reason to oppose Alphabet's plans to buy Fitbit, but that does not mean that U.S. officials, backed by a bevy of anti-Google lawmakers, will not give the proposed purchase extra scrutiny.

Google is already under antitrust investigation by the Justice Department, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and dozens of state attorneys general for allegedly using its massive market power to crush smaller competitors.

Fitbit has raised privacy concerns in the past: In 2011, the sexual activity of people using the health and fitness tracker was found to be publicly accessible online.

The company said on Friday that its users' health and wellness data would not be used for Google ads. Google said in a blog post that it would give Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their data.

Google, which has been defending its privacy practices after a number of regulatory probes, said it would be transparent about the data it collects for its devices and would not sell that data.

Fitbit brings to the deal partnerships it has struck with some large drug companies. In October, Fitbit announced a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Co and Pfizer Inc on early detection of irregular heartbeat, or atrial fibrillation, on its devices.

Fitbit in August also launched its latest smart watch, Versa 2, adding Amazon.com Inc's voice assistant Alexa, online payments and music storage to the device's capabilities.

Fitbit has been offered $7.35 per share in cash, the company said, a premium of about 19% to the stock's closing price on Thursday. The company's shares were trading up 15% at $7.11. Shares of Alphabet were nearly flat at $1,263.18.

The company's shares have gained more than 40% since Reuters reported on Monday that Google had made an offer for Fitbit.

Qatalyst Partners LLP was financial adviser to Fitbit on the deal, which is expected to close in 2020. Fenwick & West LLP was the legal adviser.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Jonathan Oatis)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Apple Watch, FitBit could feel cost of US tariffs

The latest round of US tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods could hit the Apple Watch, health trackers, streaming music speakers and other accessories assembled in China, government rulings on tariffs show.

The rulings name Apple Inc's watch, several Fitbit Inc activity trackers and connected speakers from Sonos Inc. While consumer technology's biggest sellers such as mobile phones and laptops so far have faced little danger of import duties, the rulings show that gadget makers are unlikely to be spared altogether and may have to consider price hikes on products that millions of consumers use every day.

The devices have all been determined by US Customs and Border Patrol officials to fall under an obscure subheading of data transmission machines in the sprawling list of US tariff codes. And that particular subheading is included in the more than 6,000 such codes in President Donald Trump's most recent round of proposed tariffs released earlier this month.

That $200 billion list of tariffs is in a public comment period. But if the list goes into effect this fall, the products from Apple, Fitbit and Sonos could face a 10 percent tariff.

The specific products listed in customs rulings are the original Apple Watch; Fitbit's Charge, Charge HR and Surge models; and Sonos's Play:3, Play:5 and SUB speakers.

All 3 companies declined to comment on the proposed tariff list. But in its filing earlier this month to become a publicly traded company, Sonos said that "the imposition of tariffs and other trade barriers, as well as retaliatory trade measures, could require us to raise the prices of our products and harm our sales."

The New York Times has reported that Trump told Apple CEO Tim Cook during a meeting in May that the US government would not levy tariffs on iPhones assembled in China, citing a person familiar with the meeting.

"The way the president has been using his trade authority, you have direct examples of him using his authority to target specific products and companies," said Sage Chandler, vice president for international trade policy at the Consumer Technology Association.

The toll from tariffs on the gadget world's smaller product lines could be significant. Sonos and Fitbit do not break out individual product sales, but collectively they had $2.6 billion in revenue last year. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates that the Apple Watch alone will bring in $9.9 billion in sales this year, though that estimate includes sales outside the United States that the tariff would not touch.

It is possible that the products from Apple, Fitbit and Sonos no longer fall under tariff codes in the $200 billion list, trade experts said. The codes applied to specific products are only public knowledge because their makers asked regulators to rule on their proper classification. And some of the products have been replaced by newer models that could be classified differently.

But if companies have products whose tariff codes are on the list, they have three options, experts said: Advocate to get the code dropped from the list during the public comment period, apply for an exclusion once tariffs go into effect, or try to have their products classified under a different code not on the list.

The last option could prove difficult due to the thousands of codes covered, said one former US trade official.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Time runs out for smartwatch pioneer Pebble

SAN FRANCISCO - Smartwatch pioneer Pebble announced Wednesday it was shutting down, with tech wearables giant Fitbit acquiring some of its assets including key personnel.

"Due to various factors, Pebble is no longer able to operate as an independent entity. We have made the tough decision to shut down the company and no longer manufacture Pebble devices," Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky said in a statement.

Pebble, one of the early makers of connected watches which has sold some two million devices since launching in 2012, said that "many members of Team Pebble will be joining the Fitbit family to continue their work on wearable software platforms."

A separate statement from Fitbit said it had acquired "specific assets of Pebble, including key personnel and intellectual property related to software and firmware development," but not the company's hardware product.

Terms of the deal were not announced.

"With basic wearables getting smarter and smartwatches adding health and fitness capabilities, we see an opportunity to build on our strengths and extend our leadership position in the wearables category," said Fitbit chief executive James Park.

"With this acquisition, we're well positioned to accelerate the expansion of our platform and ecosystem to make Fitbit a vital part of daily life for a wider set of consumers, as well as build the tools healthcare providers, insurers and employers need to more meaningfully integrate wearable technology into preventative and chronic care."

Pebble was among the early developers of smartwatches, raising money on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. Its 2015 drive raised a record $20.3 million.

The deal comes with Fitbit leading the pack of connected wearables makers, but with its stock slumping.

Fitbit shares rose slightly to $8.02, well off its highs last year above $50.

A report this week from research firm IDC shows Fitbit with 23 percent of the global wearables market in the third quarter, shipping some 5.3 million devices including fitness bands and smartwatches.

IDC said 85 percent of the market remains "basic" wearables with a single function such as fitness tracking, with sluggish growth in the market for more complex devices that have their own applications like the Apple Watch.

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Wrist-worn fitness trackers vary in heart rate readings

Commercial fitness trackers worn on the wrist are less accurate than a chest strap monitor at measuring heart rate, and may over- or underestimate heart rate depending on activity level, researchers say.

In general, wrist monitors are more accurate at rest than during exercise.

"If somebody must know his or her heart rate with great accuracy, like a heart patient or a trained athlete, if you really need to know, use a chest strap," said coauthor Dr. Marc Gillinov of the Cleveland Clinic.

"If you're using these wrist worn monitors and you get an odd value, way too high or too low, it's probably wrong so don't be concerned," Gillinov told Reuters Health by phone.

Motion, ambient light and varying skin tones can all affect wrist monitor accuracy, he said.

The researchers studied four heart rate monitors worn by 50 young, healthy adults exercising on treadmills. They wore electrocardiographic (ECG) limb leads and a Polar H7 chest strap monitor as comparisons for heart rate data, and also wore two of the four different wrist monitors: Fitbit Charge HR, Apple Watch, Mio Alpha and Basis Peak.

Heart rate readings were collected at rest and on the treadmill at two, three, four, five and six miles per hour. Users exercised at each level for three minutes before heart rate was recorded. Recorded heart rates ranged from 49 to 200 beats per minute (bpm).

Compared to the ECG, the heart rate monitors had variable accuracy. The Basis Peak, which is no longer commercially available, overestimated heart rate by roughly eight bpm during moderate exercise. The Fitbit Charge HR underestimated during more vigorous exercise, by about six or seven bpm.

The Apple Watch and Mio Fuse had 95 percent of their heart rate readings fall within a range of 27 to 29 bpm over or under the ECR reading, a slightly smaller range than the Fitbit or the Basis Peak, as reported in JAMA Cardiology.

The companies that make the wrist monitors do not claim that they are medical devices, Gillinov said.

"They should not be used to diagnose or treat anything, you can't count on them in that context," he said.

Aaron Coleman, CEO and founder of Fitabase, Fitbit's longtime clinical research partner, told Reuters Health he thinks the results aren't too bad, especially considering the wrist-worn devices are being compared to a research-grade device, a chest strap that would be unwieldy for any casual athlete to wear.

In general, the further away from the heart a body monitor is located, the more variation there will be in heart rate readings, he said.

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