Overnight, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) held its eagerly anticipated Apple Event 2024 Live at its headquarters in Cupertino, California.
At the event, the tech giant unveiled new versions of the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch.
While everybody loves to hear about the new iPhone, which is now in its 16th iteration, Resmed Inc (ASX: RMD) shareholders may want to pay attention to a new feature that will be included on the latest Apple Watch.
In fact, this new feature could be a big boost to ResMed and its shares over the coming years. But why?
Why is the new Apple Watch good news for ResMed shares?
ResMed is of course a medical device company with a focus on sleep disorders.
Its digital health technologies and cloud-connected medical devices transform care for people with sleep apnoea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other chronic diseases.
This is a huge market and arguably provides ResMed with a growth runway spanning decades not years. For example, in its recent results release, the company's CEO, Mick Farrell, commented:
Nearly 2.5 billion suffer from major sleep health and breathing disorders. As the market leader in these significantly underpenetrated markets, we're well-positioned as the clear leader to drive increased market penetration, demand generation, and accelerate growth for our businesses.
We're laser-focused on increasing awareness with the fast-growth population of sleep-health-interested consumers, creating virtual pathways that expand access to therapies, while offering a broad portfolio of medical device products, software solutions, and beyond, as we deliver value for all ResMed stakeholders.
As Farrell mentioned above, this market is significantly underpenetrated due to awareness. Over a billion people are believed to suffer from sleep apnoea, but only 20% of those afflicted with the disorder are diagnosed.
This is where the new Apple Watch comes in. Overnight, Apple revealed that its new Apple Watch Series 10 will be able to alert users to sleep apnoea by using an accelerometer to measure breathing disturbances while users are sleeping.
Apple notes that the feature was built using an extensive dataset and is expected to be cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulators very soon.
Source: Apple
This could be great news for ResMed as it may give awareness of the disorder a major boost, which in turn could lift demand for the company's market leading products.
ResMed shares hit a 52-week high on Wall Street overnight and look set to do the same on the ASX boards this morning.
