As of a couple of weeks ago, Google just announced the Pixel 4, its latest and greatest smartphone made to showcase the best of its Android operating system. But in a market dominated by Apple and Samsung, why does Google continue to produce smartphones?
Everyone knows Google for their successful line of freeware products, but besides the mainstream services you use every day, are you aware of what else Google makes? In 2013, Google released the first Chromecast, a dongle made to make streaming from your phone simple. This marked Google’s first forte into producing their own hardware for consumer products. In 2016, Google released the Pixel 1, the tech giant’s first smartphone under its Pixel branding. This smartphone set itself apart from the discontinued Nexus line of phones by emphasizing “Made-By-Google,” an initiative to put emphasis on that these new products were not only designed by Google but also manufactured by them. Up until this point, Google’s phones and tablets had been created through a partnership with another company in the market.
So then, why did Google decide to revive their phone division after a 2-year hiatus? According to Counterpoint Research, a research firm specializing in technological market research, Google just this year to #3 in “premium” phone sales but still only leaves them with only 2% market share in the US market. To put this in perspective, Apple and Samsung share 60% of the US market.
There are a couple of major reasons why Google continues to match Android with its own hardware. The first is data. Now I’m not talking about your personal data, but more of how your phone learns. In the past decade, Google has been a major supporter of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The most difficult part of creating an artificial intelligence model is how you train it. When you interact with the virtual assistant on your phone or the word prediction as you are typing a text, the AI Google has trained and is training is trying to understand and predict what your next moves will be. This data over time of how your phone learns over time and the adaptations it makes is most of the info Google is interested in pulling off of the phone (Not including personal data collected from Google’s services themselves).
The other piece of the puzzle is the advertising influence release a phone gives them. When companies, such as Google release a phone, they get what is known as a press cycle. This press cycle is all the press a product gets around its release. This includes, but is not limited to: speculation/leaks/teasers about features of the phone in prerelease, the release event of the phone itself, and reviews of the phone after its release. This press cycle happens for every separate product release, so in Google’s case, they released the Pixel 3a in May and the Pixel 4 in October, generating two press cycles for their phones in 2019. These press cycles do not include the advertising these companies do for the products after they are unveiled.
But although these press cycles and advertisements encourage people to buy their new products, they also get the company back in headlines and into the minds of consumers. Back to one of the first questions that were asked in this article: What are you aware of that Google makes? If you are someone who commutes on a daily basis this might be Google Maps, but if you are a college student like me, it is probably Google Drive and Gmail. This ecosystem Google has built spans more than one device or operating system and everything they do is a subtle nudge that they exist. These advertisements are a reminder not just to consider buying their products but more importantly use their services.