Apple unveils move in the direction of overall health and residence in new iPhone application

Apple has uncovered its ideas to supply apps to track wellness data and allow users to have integrated management of ‘smart home’ products. Photograph: ZUMA/REX

Blood strain a tiny substantial? Want the lights turned off in your residence? There is an app for that. Or there quickly could be following Apple unveiled the latest ideas for its iPhone software on Monday at its developers’ conference in San Francisco.

Chief executive Tim Cook heralded the new computer software, which will collect and retailer well being-connected data and also provide integrated control for “smart residence” devices such as remote-controlled light bulbs.

It will be released in the autumn and run on iPhones and iPads, as “anything only Apple can do”, Cook stated, as he pointed to statistics which stated that 130m iPhone and iPad buyers in the previous twelve months out of about 230m sold have been new to Apple’s platform.

The “HeallthKit” and “HomeKit” computer software are part of a concerted hard work by the Californian company to position its smartphone as the hub of peoples’ digital lives, considerably as it did a lot more than a decade in the past when it first launched its iTunes computer software for organising music files.

In a speech to thousands of computer software developers at the Globally Developers conference in San Francisco’s Moscone West centre, neither Cook nor Craig Federighi, Apple’s computer software chief, announced any new hardware for the well being or intelligent property classes. But Carolina Milanesi, analyst at the study company Kantar ComTech, recommended Apple was aiming to get developers to create apps for both sectors prior to generating its personal move into them. “Otherwise you get the Galaxy Gear impact where Samsung announced a $ 300 smartwatch but there weren’t any apps for it, so men and women say ‘what’s the use of that?’”

Federighi was at pains to emphasise that the health and smart residence techniques will not share consumer data without explicit permission, as it seeks to position itself as an different to the datasharing strategy used by Google, Facebook and other promoting-supported organizations.

Even so the $ 3bn acquire of the Beats headphones and music organization was not pointed out in the two-hour presentation though Federighi did jokingly make a get in touch with to “a new Apple employee” the Beats cofounder Dr Dre, who sent developers his best wishes.

Apple also showed off application known as “Handoff” that will allow iPhone owners to reply incoming cellphone calls or texts on an iPad or Mac personal computer.

With new smartphone customers getting to be increasingly difficult to uncover as the US and European markets grow to be “saturated”, Apple is hunting to entice end users of Google’s Android to use its phones and tablets. Cook put hefty emphasis on the success that the iPhone and iPad have had in China, saying that half of its buyers there had switched from Android.

Announcing HealthKit, Federighi stated that presently apps retain their information inidvidually but do not interact or connect to make great use of it. “That info lives in silos,” he said.

“You can not get a single extensive image.”

The news follows archrival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s announcement last week of a mobile healthdata retailer referred to as SAMI (Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interactions).

Samsung strategies to market SAMI by hosting a developer challenge and setting aside a $ 50m fund for earlystage digital overall health entrepreneurs.

The update to the iPhone and iPad application will be launched in the autumn, Federighi said. Though Apple created no mention of new iPhones or iPads, individuals are anticipated to be proven off just ahead of the software’s release, and to ship just right after it.

Amongst the expected updates are an iPhone with a more substantial display to capture users who might otherwise shift to the more and more popular “phablet” models, and to win back individuals who have moved away from the iPhone because they have preferred the greater screens available on Android. Presently the iPhone 5S has a 4in display, measured diagonally, whilst products like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One particular M8 have screens measuring 5in or a lot more, and analyst data shows that such larger screens are more and more well-liked.

Apple also showed off new OS X software for its desktop and laptop personal computers that will immediately connect to an iPhone, so that it will present the identity of a caller, and let them reply to SMSs immediately from the screen. Codenamed “Yosemite”, it will be offered as a public beta so that any Mac user can apply to check it.

Apple unveils move in the direction of overall health and residence in new iPhone application