I won't comment on the privacy implications, but can you substantiate your claims about competition at all?

I saw Apple Watch utterly destroy Microsoft Band and Pebble, and FitBit was headed for the same fate. If not for Google stepping in, competition against Apple Watch would have just been from Garmin (solid company, but they too probably would have been crushed).

Source: investor in Apple, FitBit, Garmin, Google, Microsoft; was in the first batch of Pebble 3rd party devs; avid Microsoft Band user and participated in a number of internal projects when I was there.