Google’s latest attempt to beat Apple at its core could end up hurting its Android partners, especially Samsung, at least in the Indian market.
Google’s new Pixel phones, scheduled for pre-bookings from October 13, will come with a starting price tag of ₹57,000. Apple currently commands the premium handset market in India and may appear to be the clear target going by the not-so-subtle jibes that Google took at Apple during the launch event in San Francisco.
Yet, experts believe it’ll not be the iPhone’s market share that’ll get hit in India but that of Google’s own Android partners.
Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst, telecoms practice at CMR, said: “I strongly believe it is very difficult to pull anyone from iPhone to an Android, irrespective of specs and premium finish. It will not have an impact on the iPhone. It will however, impact Blackberry, Sony and Samsung”.
With Blackberry exiting the mobile handset market and Sony struggling to sell high-end phones, Samsung could the only Android player losing out to Google’s Pixel phones.
Galaxy Note 7 “Samsung has about 96 per cent of the market in the ₹55,000-65,000 price band in India. Thus, it is pretty much the only player that will be affected by the Android launch,” Kawoosa said.
The timing of the launch couldn’t be worse for Samsung, which had to recall millions of Galaxy Note 7 devices after many of them started exploding and were even banned on most airlines.
Google’s seamless hardware-software integration in the Pixel phones, which is expected to bring an iPhone-like experience to Android for the first time, could be another big worry for Google’s partners.
“Google’s Nexus phones were co-branded, unlike Pixel, which does not instil enough confidence among partners. With the Nexus series, Google was prioritising OS updates to partners, but it won’t continue to be the case,” said Sanchit Gogia, CEO, Greyhound Research.
“Also, with the help of seamless hardware-software integration (which Apple is known for), a Samsung phone with the same hardware and OS as the Pixel phone will not be able to provide the same experience that Pixel would be able to provide. That is a big threat to any Android partner,” he added.
For consumers, a major worry, with the launch of Pixel is that of privacy. The centrestage of the launch of the device was not its hardware or software but its Artificial Intelligence platform, Google Assistant.
The tool, similar to Apple’s Siri, will be able to listen in to your conversations and provide suggestions even before you ask for anything.
“Google has already been scanning e-mails of consumers for advertising purposes. There is no reason to believe they wouldn’t use your everyday conversations as well for the same. That should worry a lot of users about their privacy,” Gogia. said.