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Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

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Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#121

Post by yifanl »

mrcwinn wrote: post #93
spogbiper wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.

(I couldn't reply down another level.) >How HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of [sic] competition is beyond me. That suggests HN is a monoculture of some sort of united front. It is not. Diversity of opinion is best for this community (and all communities). And, sorry, what competition was killed off here? I, as the consumer, was never considering Massimo for my blood oxygen measurement needs. I b…

Why were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#122

Post by runako »

eitally wrote: post #96
runako wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are a large publicly-traded company. The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800 million annually in sales, general and admin. This is over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D spend is higher than its SG&A spend.) Per levels.fyi…

I disagree with your assertion that Masimo has the money to compete. Apple's upside to employing these folks to build the tech into the Apple Watch is FAR, FAR greater than Masimo's potential sales growth for existing pulse ox devices (or patent licenses). With Apple Watches being licensed as medical devices for ECG & pulse ox, this gives clinicians even more reason to leverage them with patients for convenient 24/7…

I specifically did not address any of the corporate competitive dynamics, although it is worth noting that this is more of an existential issue for Masimo than Apple.

My core point is is that Masimo has far more than enough money to pay strategic employees enough money to keep them. Again, I doubt they would have to go as high as $5m/year for each of the relevant engineers. Masimo could spend that without making a major dent in their finances.

Could Apple up the ante and make offers of $5B/yr to each engineer? Sure, but we are likely talking about the difference between Masimo offering $150k and Apple offering $500k. These are numbers any public company can afford.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#124

Post by runako »

boringg wrote: post #85
runako wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are a large publicly-traded company. The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800 million annually in sales, general and admin. This is over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D spend is higher than its SG&A spend.) Per levels.fyi…

Im not saying they pay them well or not. Theres just not a comparison on comp they could do. That you don't understand the power dynamics between that is something you will hopefully learn about the world as you become more experienced. Apple would just offer more at the end of the day.

I understand, and this is timely in the context of Meta making $100m offers. I have no data on this, but I would be highly surprised if Apple offered anybody more than $5m/year. Masimo has that much money.

Could Apple go higher? Sure, but again most people who like their jobs are not going to leave once their needs are met.

From a competitive standpoint: Masimo has lost $8B in market cap during this kerfuffle. It's entirely possible it would have been rational for Masimo to pay these employees higher than Apple possibly would go in order to not lose those billions in value.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#125

Post by lovich »

yifanl wrote: post #121
mrcwinn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I couldn't reply down another level.) >How HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of [sic] competition is beyond me. That suggests HN is a monoculture of some sort of united front. It is not. Diversity of opinion is best for this community (and all communities). And, sorry, what competition was killed off here? I, as the consumer, was never considering Massimo for my blood oxygen measurement needs. I b…

Why were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?

Not the OP but as someone in the same boat.

I wasn’t going to buy a device just for blood monitoring. What they produced is valuable to me as a feature of a product but not as a product in of itself

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#126

Post by runako »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #98
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company made a billion dollars in profit last year. I doubt Apple was willing to pay anywhere near that amount to hire an employee.

They did not earn $1B in profit in the last year. Or 5. https://companiesmarketcap.com/masimo/earnings/ https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MASI/masimo/net-in...

Check the ratio of SG&A to R&D spend at MASI. They have money, they just choose not to spend it on engineering.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#127

Post by clint »

Angostura wrote: post #4
brandonb wrote: post #2

Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch. The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red…

> The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to infrared light, then apply calibration constants from experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation. Sorry, maybe I missed it - but source for this?

The literal article that is the sole focus of this entire thread?

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#128

Post by yifanl »

lovich wrote: post #125
yifanl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?

Not the OP but as someone in the same boat. I wasn’t going to buy a device just for blood monitoring. What they produced is valuable to me as a feature of a product but not as a product in of itself

So we should allow apple to have monopoly power in every industry because otherwise it'd be annoying to buy separate devices.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#129

Post by wahnfrieden »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #114
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as a company is turning a profit, they by definition can afford to be paying their employees better. As a company you can choose not to, but it also means you get to suffer the consequences, and lose the right to complain that your employees were "poached" when in reality it was simply a matter of you not paying them enough to stay.

Profit distribution only makes sense to owners of the company. A better way to give employees a share of the profits is to give them shares of the company. But then that also comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You cannot pay for groceries with company shares. People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad, but explained…

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#130

Post by rootsudo »

unglaublich wrote: post #6
brandonb wrote: post #2

Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch. The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red…

Crazy that this is a 'patent'. We did this experiment in high school 30 years ago.

I've just been amazed how many things could be a patent and why I haven't spent time to learn.
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