Morgan Stanley: Apple Healthcare Could Bring In $313B By 2027

Morgan Stanley analysts predict healthcare to emerge as a key market for Apple, reports in CNBC said Monday (April 8).

Apple’s offerings in the healthcare space could generate $15 billion in sales by 2021, Morgan Stanley predicted, pointing to the rising adoption of the Apple Watch and its opportunity in the health space. That includes features like heart rate and step monitoring, and eventually possible tools like blood pressure and glucose monitoring.

Reports said the high-end of Morgan Stanley analysts peg potential sales as high as $313 billion by 2027. Apple posted $266 billion in total revenues for 2018, reports noted.

“At the mid-point, Apple’s health efforts could result in ~$90 billion of annual revenue by 2027, roughly ~25 percent of its current revenues base,” analysts said in a report released Monday, pointing to a few key differentiators for Apple over top rivals Microsoft and Google. One of the largest is privacy and customer trust, with analysts pointing to Apple’s recruitment of 400,000 in less than a year for a heart health study using Apple Watch. Reports noted that the successful recruitment effort displays customer trust in Apple using health data.

The company is already making inroads in the healthcare space in other ways, including partnerships with companies in the industry. Apple struck a deal with health insurance company Aetna and, reports noted, is in discussions to have as similar partnership for private medicare plans.

“Medicare has the most concentrated pools of money and is the least complicated to navigate,” Morgan Stanley said in its report.

Another key opportunity for Apple in the healthcare field is through health data and providing analytics and other insights to providers like hospitals and clinics. The company will have to maintain customer trust and privacy, however, while still advertising an analytics opportunity with those providers, Morgan Stanley noted.

Analysts also provided a list of other potential opportunities for Apple in the healthcare space, including the launch of new wearables for health-related purposes, the integration of medical-grade monitoring into existing wearables, enabling health insurance reimbursement of Apple Watch purchases, or the acquisition of a healthcare company.

A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment on the matter when requested by CNBC, the publication said.