Imitation and gap: Are Google's series of hardware launches more hype than substance?

Recently, Google released a series of new hardware-focused products, including mobile phones, routers, VR helmets, and the speaker version of Google Home. Some commentators believe that this release is of great significance, foreshadowing Google's shift from its previous strategy of simply focusing on "software" to building its own integrated hardware and software ecosystem. Is this really the case?

Let’s first take a look at the Pixel phone, the blockbuster product of this series of hardware releases

Apart from the latest native Android system, Snapdragon 821 processor, metal body, 7 hours of battery life after 15 minutes of charging, or 4GB RAM, there is basically no innovation or highlight compared with other flagship phones in the Android camp. Considering that Google recently renamed its own brand Nexus series of phones to Pixel, the industry's evaluation that it is "changing the soup but not the medicine" is not without reason.

It is a well-known fact that in the field of smartphones and hardware, Google's Nexus has had mediocre market performance since its launch (it is said that Google's first Nexus phone sold only about 200,000 units at the time, far less than the millions of units Google had set as its goal). According to Google's original idea, the company planned to create a series of Nexus-branded devices, hoping to set a benchmark for global Android phone and tablet manufacturers to learn from. However, in the context of fierce competition in the smartphone market, Google has not been able to provide industry-leading design and innovation, which means that Nexus has long lost its role as a benchmark for Android phones.

In addition, the fact that Nexus phones are sold through Google's official website and are not sold by operators has also affected their sales to some extent. Unfortunately, the renamed Pixel phones are still repeating the old path of Nexus in terms of both the product itself and the marketing method.

In fact, in addition to Nexus, Google also has technologies and products related to mobile phones. The most well-known among the industry is the modular mobile phone Project Ara. However, due to its great difficulty and its inconsistency with the general trend of development of the smartphone industry, the project was eventually abandoned after several twists and turns.

As for the Tango mobile phone with augmented reality function, except for Lenovo which adopted the technology earlier, no other manufacturer has adopted this technology so far. The sales of Lenovo's mobile phones using Tango technology remain to be tested by the market.

Let’s look at VR, which is receiving much attention and hype in the industry

In response to this trend, Google previously released the industry's first VR platform - Daydream, but so far, it seems that no Android manufacturer has launched a mobile phone or VR device that supports this platform. In this sense, Google's release of its own Daydream View is also somewhat helpless.

As for the Daydream View product itself, according to comprehensive media reports, its performance and experience are similar to Samsung's GearVR, the leader in mobile VR products, and the price is slightly lower. But the problem that follows is that the reason why Samsung's VR products have considerable sales is closely related to the sales of its mobile phones. This correlation is reflected in Samsung's huge mobile phone user base and the fact that Samsung often adopts the marketing method of "buy a mobile phone and get a free VR".

In contrast, Google Daydream View does not have the above conditions, and in the early stage of VR popularization, the above advantages of Samsung are crucial, even decisive, to promote the sales of VR. More importantly, judging from its performance and experience, which are almost the same as Samsung GearVR, Google has not demonstrated the advantages of its own Daydream platform and VR hardware based on the platform, not to mention comparing it with Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's HTC Vive.

Finally, the one that has received much attention in the industry is Google Home, which is based on its Google Assistant.

Google Home is a new product announced at the Google I/O 2016 developer conference this year but not released. Simply put, it is a device with a Wi-Fi speaker, similar to a small Bluetooth speaker, that can be the control center of home devices, with a focus on music entertainment and voice search. I wonder what the industry thinks of this product? Of course, it is the Amazon Echo that has been a huge success in the market recently.

The fact is that Amazon Echo is a voice assistant device released by Amazon as early as November 2014. By March this year, Amazon had expanded its Echo product line. It is said that Echo has sold millions of units, and its applications and scenarios are leading the industry. However, judging from the current main applications, it is not an irreplaceable killer application for users, which means that there is still a long way to go in the field of AI based on voice recognition. When it comes to voice recognition, let alone compared with Amazon, even compared with China's Baidu, Google still has a gap.

Therefore, whether in terms of supporting technology or actual product form (it had previously been committed to the thermostat acquired from Nest, but with poor results), Google's so-called innovative capabilities that embody AI are typical imitations and are far from the standards of AI.

Judging from the major launches of the above-mentioned Google hardware series, we believe that it does not have an advantage in the market either from the perspective of innovation or marketing. It has even fallen behind its competitors and shows signs of imitation everywhere. From the perspective of the relevant industry itself, Google has also failed to show a leading position. Therefore, we believe that the launch of Google's large-scale hardware series this time is more hype than substance, and the strategic shift is an overly idealistic speculation in the industry.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.