Tim Cook Shares The ‘Apple Watch Story’ With News18; Meets Saina Nehwal, Pullela Gopichand | Exclusive

Apple CEO Tim Cook on his India visit, for the Apple Store launch in Mumbai and Delhi, took some time out to meet badminton stars Saina Nehwal, Pullela Gopichand and Parupalli Kashyap. The Apple CEO was keen on witnessing how professional athletes are using the features of Apple Watch to get more from their intense training sessions.

He visited the badminton court at Mumbai Cricket Association, BKC and even joined Gopichand for a brief badminton session. Later he moved on to interact with kids aspiring to follow in the illustrious footsteps of Gopichand and Nehwal.

WATCH VIDEO: Apple Tim Cook Shares The ‘Apple Watch Story’ With News18

Tim Cook interacted exclusively with Debashis Sarkar of News18 after a couple of sessions on the badminton court. “It’s wonderful to be here. It’s so great to be in India. We’ve looked forward to this week for a long time,” he said.

When asked about how the Apple Watch has been able to create an impact on the lives of professional athletes and fitness-focused users, Tim Cook replied, “You know, it started with focusing on wellness and creating the three rings -the move, stand, and your exercise bar. It went from there to heart rate and detecting AFib, and of course notifications came early on as well. And so it has just expanded to cover the waterfront of people’s needs.”

“It’s so great for me to come to India and hear how it’s used in actual training. But I did notice, every day, from people about how the Apple Watch helped them in finding out that they had AFib. And they told me that their doctors told them they would have died if they had not found out about it in time,” he added.

[Tim Cook with badminton stars Saina Nehwal, Pullela Gopichand and Parupalli Kashyap at Mumbai Cricket Association, BKC in Mumbai. (Image: Debashis Sarkar/News18)]

Talking about heart rate tracking on Apple Watch, the Apple CEO said, “We just keep pulling the string to see where it takes us. One of the athletes here today told me that they use the sleep function a lot, and all of them use the heart rate function to see which heart rate zone they’re operating at. And so, there’s just an enormous amount of functionality in this little thing that you put on your wrist now. It’s fantastic.”

Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap have been using the Apple Watch for quite some time now to track their progress while training.

“I started using the Apple Watch a few years back and kept upgrading as and when a new model got launched. Monitoring heart rate is a very crucial metric to know how well or not you have performed during a particular training session. Earlier, we had to feel the pulse to make an estimate of heart rate but with the Apple Watch, we get accurate heart rate tracking always. It has been very helpful,” Nehwal told News18.

“The Apple Watch takes care of monitoring aspects of blood oxygen, ECG, heart rate and even sleep. This helps in getting an accurate idea of the level of fitness. We no longer have to use bulky machines for ECG or heart rate, this tiny Watch with its sensors does the job,” said Kashyap.

WATCH Video: Tim Cook inaugurates Apple BKC store in Mumbai

While we have access to devices like Apple Watch in recent times, Gopichand offered his perspective on adoption of newer technologies. “We have seen fine athletes who made it to the top in the past without having any device like the Apple Watch. Technology plays its part but it’s the individual’s hard work that matters. It feels good to see athletes adopting newer technologies to track minute fitness details, this just emphasises how competitive things have become,” he said.

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