A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a Silicon Valley startup accusing Apple of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for heart rate monitoring apps for its Apple Watch.
Jonathan Stempel for Reuters:
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, ruled on Tuesday against AliveCor, which had developed an app for detecting irregular heartbeats.
“AliveCor is deeply disappointed and strongly disagrees with the court’s decision to dismiss our anti-competition case and we plan to appeal,” the company said in a statement.
Apple said in a statement that the lawsuit challenged its ability to make improvements to the Apple Watch that consumers and developers rely on. “Today’s outcome confirms that is not anticompetitive,” it said.
AliveCor had developed KardiaBand, a wristband for the Apple Watch capable of recording an electrocardiogram, or ECG.
MacDailyNews Take: DeadCor.
The fact is that AliveCor sells a bunch of finger-pad devices that cost more, are less convenient, and more likely to get lost versus an Apple Watch that’s strapped to your wrist. AliveCor is losing because their ECG solutions are less elegant, larger, bulkier than simply wearing an Apple Watch Series 4 (released in September 2018) or later with ECG.
There a reason why founding CEO, and former Google exec, Vic Gundotra left AliveCor in February 2018: The company has no real future as currently constructed.
Can’t compete? Litigate.
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Looks like a good week for winning lawsuits. Way to go Apple.
Is it my imagination or is MDN not reading “AliveCor had developed KardiaBand, a wristband for the Apple Watch capable of recording an electrocardiogram, or ECG.” before considering repeating their Take from almost 3 years ago. Cut and Paste doesn’t cure reading laziness.