Apple Watch Series 8<\/a> to switch to Android.<\/p>\nConversely, Google’s Wear OS software hasn’t caught on widely. Apple’s Watch OS-powered Apple Watches locked in 29% of global smartwatch shipments in the second quarter of 2022, making Apple the single biggest company by far, according to Counterpoint Research. While Android makers create cutting-edge phones, not having strong smartwatch software made it hard to compete against Apple, and Google itself had no smartwatch product at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first Apple Watch arrived in 2015, the year after Google announced its Wear OS software effort. Apple’s initial sales pitch was somewhat muddled \u2014 was the Apple Watch a useful digital timepiece or an expensive fashion accessory? But the company hit its stride with steady annual improvements that cemented its smartwatch as a tool for communication, health and fitness.<\/p>\n
Google struggled to achieve Wear OS success despite support from fashion brands such as Fossil and Michael Kors. Top Android phone maker partner Samsung abandoned Wear OS for its own Tizen OS instead. That rift only began to heal when Samsung came back to the Google fold with the Galaxy Watch 4 in 2021.<\/p>\n
For the Pixel Watch to succeed, Google will need to give us a good reason to buy it, like superior AI features and integration with Android phones and Google services. That would help not just Google’s hardware division profits, but the whole Android world.<\/p>\n
A good watch now can be as important as a good phone for customer loyalty. “I actually would argue that quite a few customers stayed with Apple because of Apple Watch, and not necessarily because of the iPhone,” said Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.<\/p>\n
Milanesi suspects Google’s hardware division, Made by Google, simply hasn’t had the funding and staff to compete effectively against the Apple Watch.<\/p>\n
“We always need to think about Google versus Made by Google,” she said. “I think that Made by Google still has limited resources.”<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With its Pixel Watch set to debut Thursday, Google has a chance to make up for lost time by giving Android smartphone owners a worthy smartwatch \u2014 and giving them a better reason not to switch to Apple products. On Thursday, Pixel phones and watches will share the spotlight with smart home devices and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":73678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[3171,3224,3175,3429,3170,3197,3490],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}