Apple Announces Fitness+ And Bundling Service Along With Watch, iPad Upgrades

Apple Inc. AAPL on Tuesday highlighted new updates to its popular Apple Watch and Apple iPad business units at its annual September presentation.

Apple Watch: The evolution of the Apple Watch into more of a health and fitness device continues with the new Watch Series 6. New features include sleep tracking, handwashing timer and reminders, and Blood O2 measure. The Blood O2 measure can now be taken directly from a wrist in 15 seconds.

The Apple Watch Series 6 will retail for $399.

Apple presented two new ways to get the Apple Watch to more users. A new feature called Family Setup allows families an option to have Apple Watches for kids that don’t have their own iPhone. Prior versions required an iPhone for each Apple Watch user.

The new Apple Watch SE features many of the same features from the Series 6, including Family Setup. This watch will retail for $279 and can be financed for $12 a month. Both watches will be available starting Friday, Sept. 18.

The new Apple Watch did not feature stress monitoring, which will now be one feature setting Fitbit FIT apart.

See Also: 5 Things You May Not Know About Apple Heading Into This Week's Event

Apple Fitness+: Apple announced a new evolution of its Workout App called Apple Fitness+. This subscription service can be used on any screen in any location. Ten types or workouts are featured on the service and can be streamed to an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.

The workouts from Apple Fitness+ can be performed with any brand of equipment. Some workouts require just dumbbells and others can be done with no equipment at all. Apple calls the service the “perfect workout companion.”

Fresh new workouts will be added every week. The service will cost $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. Families are included at no additional fee.

This new offering could put pressure on Peloton Interactive PTON, who has seen a surge in user growth with its huge workout library curated to its bikes and treadmills.

Apple One: Apple also announced its new bundling offering called Apple One. An individual plan starts at $14.95 a month and a family plan costs $19.95 a month. The plan includes iCloud storage, Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade. A higher cost $29.95 monthly plan also includes Apple News Plus and Apple Fitness+.

Apple iPad: Apple unveiled updates to its two most popular iPad offerings. The iPad 8th generation features an A12 Bionic Chip that has faster processing and better graphics than its last offering. The chip makes the tablet two times faster than the top-selling Windows tablet and three times faster than the top-selling Android-based tablet.

The iPad 8th generation will be available starting Friday and comes with a retail price off $329, or $299 for education customers.

The iPad Air gets major updates and increased performance. The Touch ID will be featured on the top button, the smallest authorization from Apple ever. An A14 Bionic chip that is five nanometers provides 40% increased performance from the last iPad Air. The processor can handle 11 trillion operations per second. The iPad Air features a 7MP camera on front and a 12MP camera on back.

The new iPad Air will be available next month with a retail price of $599.

AAPL Price Action: Shares of Apple traded at $117.86 prior to the event. Shares were trading up 1% to $116.27 shortly after the event was over.