Samsung is hoping to win fitness tracker adopters over with a key advantage: no subscription fees. At a time when many consumer companies in the health space charge users monthly for their services, the new Galaxy Ring, Galaxy Watch 7, and Galaxy Watch Ultra arrive without software paywalls.
Samsung Health, Samsung's unified health and wellness app, has been free for customers since it launched in 2012. Standard on all Samsung smartwatches (and now, Samsung smart rings) Samsung Health is how users can monitor and review insights on their wellness. It's packed with great features like sleep analysis, exercise tracking, nutrition plans, period predictions, and more — primarily driven by data collected by Samsung's wearables.
This year's wearable collection ups the ante with sophisticated health tools such as sleep apnea detection and AGEs Index readings, as well as personalized insights powered by Galaxy AI and Samsung's latest-gen BioActive sensor. When I sat down with Dr. Hon Pak, Samsung VP & Head of its Digital Health Team, to learn more about these latest Samsung Health additions , I couldn't help but ask, when the heck will Samsung start charging for all of this?
Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch subscription fees — what you need to know
Speaking to a small group of media following Samsung Unpacked 2024, Dr. Pak elaborated on the highlights of this year's wearable devices, and what they can do to "simplify healthcare to the extent that's possible," as healthcare shifts largely to the home.
Samsung's commitment to democratizing users' personal understandings of health seems obvious, considering it doesn't demand recurring payments beyond the initial hardware investment. That's become a major talking point of Galaxy Ring vs. Oura Ring, with the latter smart ring market leader charging $5.99/month for its fitness-tracking services.
There have been instances in the past of services moving to paid formats after the fact, whether it's to take advantage of demand or offset the costs associated with developing and maintaining core features. But Dr. Pak is confident this won't be the case for the current collection of Samsung Health capabilities.
"With the features we have today, we won't go back to these features and say you'll need to pay for these," said Dr. Pak. "I don't think that's going to happen. From my conversation with leadership, we won't give something free and then go back."
But that doesn't mean Samsung Health will remain 100% free forever.
"When we add more value than what we give, at some point it might be valuable enough where we then charge for a premium service," Dr. Pak said.
Dr. Pak offered an example of what kind of feature could have the kind of value that customers would be willing to pay for:
"Let's say we have a medication tracking feature that's launched in the U.S. already, good adoption, people love it," he said. "We're working with Walgreens to make your prescription download automatically for Walgreen customers. But what if we could help you do refills and give you a lowest cost finder? What if we do those things and give you an added value, should we charge you a subscription? Maybe, it's a consideration."
According to Dr. Pak, there's "no timeline" or guarantee even that a paid structure is something Samsung wants to pursue when it comes to future feature roll-outs. But it should give some peace of mind to anyone preordering their Galaxy Ring or preordering their new Galaxy Watch that they won't be hit with subscription fees to use any of today's features — including the new ones just announced.
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