Alphabet inc, Google’s parent company, announced their new line of smartphones Tuesday the 4th of October. You might know Google smartphones from their six year old line of smartphones called Nexus, which was only a small dip in the smartphone hardware business as their phones were outsourced to many other smartphone makers like Samsung and LG. However, this time around it’s different because Google is bringing their hardware and software design under the same roof with their new smartphone called Pixel and the Pixel XL.
The philosophy of striving for a tight integration of hardware and software looks a lot like Apple’s longstanding philosophy. This, together with Googles string of announcements, a new smartphone with high end camera, a speaker for the living room, a virtual headset and a new Wi-Fi router, shows that the company is definitely intending to compete with apple.
Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh, responsible for Googles reorganization that placed once-disparate hardware teams from Google glass, Chromecast and pixel under the same roof, mentioned that by making hardware and software work together, innovating would be much easier. Googles contribution to the Nexus phone didn’t happen until the phone was 90% done. Now, Google is responsible for most of the production except for the assembling part, which is done by HTC.
Why I put so much emphasize on the fact that Google is completely manufacturing their own smartphone is not only because it’s a very big, risky and financial commitment, but also because they are taking many pages from Apple’s playbook, which will be their biggest competitor in the high-end $400 billion global smartphone market. The question however is: will it be enough to take off in the already saturated smartphone market?
Google believes that the future of mobile phones won’t just be the best performing phone based on hardware and software, which they call a ‘mobile first’. They believe that the focus on a mobile first will shift to an AI first, where the phone will mainly be controlled by AI, instead of the familiar smartphone interfaces. ‘’Real innovation is where hardware and software intersect, with AI in its center,’’ as mentioned by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The Pixel and the Pixel XL will be the first mobile devices that will have Google Assistant, which will be one of the phones main selling points. With your Assistant, you can have a natural conversation with Google to find answers or get things done on the go. With the Google Assistant, Google is trying to compete with the likes of Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa, which are all similar voice controlled assistants trying to gain supremacy as more and more people searching the web and making purchases by voice commands.
Another big selling point for Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL is their camera, or as Google calls it: The best smartphone camera ever. The Pixel’s DxOMark, a reference for image quality used by many smartphone makers, is 89, which is higher than the recently released iPhone 7 or any other smartphone at the moment. This will make the Pixel very competitive accompanied with its free unlimited storage in the cloud. Will this however be enough to win enough market share from other smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung? Some say that Samsung will be the biggest victim to the Pixel because Google’s phone will be the first device to launch with the new Android operating system Nougat 7.1. Google pushing its own hardware might also complicate things with other Android licensees as Android profits a lot from free embedded services offered by Google.
Smartphone industry analyst Patrick Moorhead also mentioned that besides the camera there isn’t much diversification compared to the seventh generation Samsung and Apple devices. Early benchmarks offered by Geekbench 4 also showed that the pixel and Pixel XL are outperformed by the iPhone 7 based on their technical specifications.
Only time will tell if the Pixel and Pixel XL will actually take off and take market share from big competitors like Samsung and Apple. However, Google joining the Smartphone market with their own hardware could bring some innovations to the saturated smartphone market. Will Google be the company to lead the Smartphone market of AI controlled devices, or is this a passing trend? The two smartphones will release October 20th, and that’s when we’ll see how it performs compared to the other smartphone giants.
Sources:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-04/behind-the-pixel-google-s-first-real-threat-to-apple-s-iphone
https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-our-new-phone-made-google/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-hardware-idUSKCN12409J
Everything you need to know from Google’s Pixel event
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/05/apples-iphone-7-handily-outperforms-new-google-pixel-in-early-benchmarks
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2469877/google-pixel-and-pixel-xl-release-date-specs-and-price
