You mostly won’t notice them, due to all of the watch faces being black. Google’s device isn’t helped much by some sizable bezels on the sides. We’re very much dealing with screen sizes where a fraction of an inch can make a world of difference. The display is even smaller, at 1.2 inches, to the 41mm Series 8’s 1.53 inches. The case is 41mm, the smaller of the two standard Apple Watch models. It’s a watch distilled down to its essence - glossy curved glass, with a haptic crown on the side. It’s about as minimal as one can get - a big change from the Apple Watch Ultra I’d been wearing previously. Add in the company’s work with Samsung, and you’ve got a kind of secret history of the smartwatch universe sitting in front of you. It’s difficult to point to, but there are likely pieces of OG wearable Pebble, Vector, Twine and Coin (Fitbit), along with Misfit (Fossil) living in this small device currently sitting on my wrist. There’s a sense in which it acquired the many companies they themselves acquired. It’s worth noting that Google didn’t just buy Fitbit and a piece of Fossil. Certainly the product looks like nothing Fitbit has ever given us before. The deal mostly revolved around an unseen prototype that may well have served as the architecture for the new Pixel Watch hardware. The bit that gets lost in a lot of this is the company’s 2019 purchase of $40 million in Fossil IP. Like the Samsung move, that deal immediately buys Google more market share, and from the looks of things, it will work out similarly to the Apple/Beats deal: Google gets immediately built-in sales and keeps the brand name around, as it uses Fitbit’s software as a foundation for its first-party play. It’s not every day a household name gets acquired.
The $2.1 billion Fitbit deal was obviously the highest-profile move there - and understandably so. Both companies were staring at Apple’s first place lead from a distance, so why not join forces? At the very least, it’s been a swift kick in the pants for a wearable operating system that has languished for the better part of a decade.Įven more central to the deal are a pair of big purchases. For one thing, Google’s partnership with Samsung meant an overnight increase in Wear OS market share. While devices are reasonably far along in this world, things aren’t that cut and dry.
Entering an already mature hardware category isn’t easy for anyone spending in excess of $2 billion is a pretty good shortcut if your pockets are deep enough.
One can make a compelling argument that the software giant learned some hard lessons from past smartwatch and earbud struggles. But suddenly, Google emerging as competitive in the smartwatch space doesn’t seem an altogether outlandish proposition. It took some evasive maneuvering to get us here - the building out of a small-scale hardware ecosystem, coupled with a couple big-ticket acquisitions and a partnership with one of its largest potential competitors.
0 kommentar(er)
