Yesterday the first Google I/O keynote took place, Google’s annual developer event (similar to Apple’s WWDC). There, Sundar Pichai spearheaded a series of innovations in his services and showed off the company’s new hardware for the first time, including a Pixel Watch, new Pixel Buds Pro and a Pixel tablet.
With all these evolutions, added to those designed for accessories, Google is starting to show that it understands what it takes to compete with Apple on the terms. Putting Android phones against the iPhone is not enough: a whole ecosystem of products and accessories must be offered
More devices and more integration, two powerful weapons
The experience we’ve all had with accessories like AirPods shows that it is the experience that remains the most in the memory of users. There’s nothing like opening the case of the headphones and magically connecting them to the device we’re using. And not only that: they are also linked to the rest of the devices configured with our Apple ID.
That’s exactly what Samsung and Google replicated in their own headphones, and yesterday Google came full circle with a tablet and a smartwatch. In Mountain View they can already say that they have an equivalent to the range of Apple devices and accessories
And a few weeks ago we saw a sign from another ambitious and promising competitor, Nothing, detailing the same thing and even directly mentioning Apple’s strategy when announcing that they were launching a phone. They started with headphones which gave good results and this summer we will see this expansion to the smartphone. In the video, they promised seamless integration between these two devices
We already knew that there was a battle between ecosystems to retain and retain users. Switching from iPhone to Android or vice versa also changes the use of many apps and services, so more than one person may be too lazy to switch. But now these ecosystems are strengthened: Google will have more accessories, nothing can surprise us with its own integration within Android… it will be very interesting to see how this competition evolves which is gradually rising in level.
