The question is does Apple want the scrutiny that banks have over them. Part of the article already mentioned that Goldman didn’t like the increased scrutiny that came over their business once they partnered with Apple so I’m sure Apple wouldn’t want the increased scrutiny of becoming a financial institution themselves. Just being the named partner on a card and taking a fee is probably the most they want to do
I mean I charged my Series 6 either in the hour before bed or would just let it charge while on my way to work in the car. So usually I averaged about 45 minutes to an hour without it on and charging a day. It usually never got back up to 100% but it stayed within about 85% to 30% everyday with those habits. I now have an Ultra 2 and only charge it for about 45 minutes to an hour every other day.
While it would be great to having longer battery life like Polar or Garmin or Fitbit or other dedicated sports watches the battery life of the Apple Watch doesn’t prevent you from using it for sleep tracking (which from my use will at most take 10% of battery if you had a pretty restless night of sleep).
Even if this is a sweetheart deal every apple device uses an ARM based chip so they are still probably making a tens of millions if not a couple hundred million in royalties from just Apple per year