Microsoft once had a short-lived series of wearables - the Band, and the Band 2 - that sold from 2014 to 2016. By early 2019, the company ended all support for the fitness trackers, essentially exiting the market. But patent data suggests that Microsoft is keeping a door open.
A patent for monitoring biometric signals during sleep using a wearable device was just granted to Microsoft in March 2021. The application was filed in December 2018, two years after the company had stopped producing its Band wearables. The patented wearable can include temperature sensors, heart rate detection, motion sensors, and EEG sensors. In November 2018, Microsoft also filed a patent application for a photoplethysmogram device. Microsoft has not been active in filing more wearable patents since 2018; however, the fact that the company completed prosecution instead of letting the filings go abandoned suggests that it sees value in owning these assets. Will Microsoft end up licensing this technology? Or will it follow in the footsteps of Google, which had no patents in the sector and pursued acquisition rather than developing its own R&D? You can keep up with these developments on the Consumer Sleep Patent Forecast®.
