The Healthcare market holds huge earning potential and Apple is one of the latest tech companies who wants a slice of the pie. Healthcare technology is worth $7 trillion globally and According to CBInsights, Apple sees healthcare and wellness as the center of its app services and wearable strategies.
Since the release of the Apple Health Record and Apple watch it’s clear that Apple has made their entrance into the healthcare space. Apple CEO Tim Cook believes their new healthcare tech initiative will be bigger than iPhone and will be their “greatest contribution to mankind” and here’s why.
With so many tech companies moving into territories that Apple has once dominated (phones and wearable accessories) Apple has to develop different ways to differentiate its products and reach their core goals of selling more high-margin hardware, increasing switching costs from its ecosystem and expanding its service offerings (Apple Cloud, App Store,etc.). By keeping consumers in its ecosystem, Apple was able to create a third-party developer system in its app store. Since other tech companies lack an existing third-party developer ecosystem this makes for an open opportunity for Apple.
Apple can also use healthcare as a way to distribute its products into the hands of demographics that it has had a tough time targeting: the low-income and elderly populations. Considering these groups are more likely to be sick, Apple can position itself as a tool to improve health outcomes and distribute these products to family members or insurance carriers.
Apples biggest brand advantage in tech is that they create products that work seamlessly with each other and allows users to receive the same information on all their Apple devices. By creating a stronger consumer experience, costumers are more likely to buy Apple products and stay in the Apple community.
Apple is diving deeper into the “One stop shop” positioning strategy and tailoring their products as the go to for organization, social life and health. Only time will tell if it will truly be the ‘greatest contribution to mankind’ but by the sounds of things it does seem it would be great addition to Apples lineup for consumers.