At this point, smartwatches are expected to tell you more than just the time of day or your step count. So more technology companies have turned to your health, such as tracking sleeping patterns and your heart rate, as the next key upgrade.

San Diego’s Qualcomm has struck a new partnership to do just that with Masimo, a medical technology company, and Google to bring these new tools to your wrist.

The companies are collaborating to expand the features offered on next-generation smartwatches, such as health and wellness tracking tools. The internal technology will benefit manufacturers who are making smartwatches using Google’s operating system.

Though Qualcomm is most known for its chips and modems that power smartphones and laptops, the San Diego company has applied its expertise to a variety of other segments such as cars and virtual reality headsets.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon technology has already been used in a variety of wearable devices including high-end designer smartwatches, a medical alert smartwatch for seniors, FitBits, low-power kids smartwatches, and GPS trackers for pet collars.

“Beginning with Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1, this collaboration will significantly broaden the range of smartwatch choices for consumers and further enhance the already exceptional Wear OS experience,” said Dino Bekis, vice president of wearables and mixed signal solutions at Qualcomm. “With these reference designs, (manufacturers) will benefit from robust, production-ready designs, incorporating Masimo’s state-of-the-art biosensing technology and Qualcomm Technologies’ leading Snapdragon wearable platforms. It will ultimately enable them to seamlessly bring their smartwatches to market rapidly and at scale.”

Joe Kiani, founder and CEO of Masimo, said it was a natural decision for the company to use Qualcomm’s chips to power its latest upcoming smartwatch technology called Masimo Freedom. The forthcoming watch – which is not cleared for medical applications – tracks vitals such as relative hydration, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and pulse rate.

“In short, Qualcomm Technologies and Masimo engineers are working together to optimize the ‘guts’ of the smartwatch,” Kiani said in the announcement. “Masimo’s ability to craft precision monitoring technologies and advanced signal processing algorithms, combined with meticulously engineered, high-performing, low-power Snapdragon systems, is a compelling foundation.”

The manufacturers of smartwatches will have the freedom to design the product exteriors and user interface, while the inner workings of the wearable technology will be designed and tested by Masimo.

Irvine-based Masimo makes health-centered technology used by hospitals, such as pulse-oximeters, and consumer devices, like watches and baby monitors, that help track vitals.

Masimo made headlines when it sued Apple in 2020 for infringing on its patents for wearable technology that tracks blood oxygen and heart rate. In December, a court ruled that the blood oxygen tracking in Apple watches did infringe on Masimo’s patent, which led the tech giant to drop the feature from its product.

The news of Masimo’s partnership with Qualcomm comes a week after Apple unveiled its forthcoming iPhone and smartwatch models. One of the key features the company highlighted in its Apple Watch Series 10 is sleep apnea notifications that track the user’s breathing patterns.

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