Google’s hardware plan is to follow Apple, and it’s genius

This is no more evident with Google’s masterful pricing scheme. When Apple introduces an expensive product, it’s instantly criticized—most loudly by Android and Google fans. But quietly, Google is now selling similarly priced or even more expensive products.

Last year when when Apple introduced the $159 AirPods, most critics scoffed at the insane price tag. There was obvious negative blowback, but Apple dealt with it. Today, it’s still difficult to find a pair.

Google just so happened to take the wraps off its own wireless earphones in the Pixel Buds for the same exact price.

The same rationale applies to the Home Max price ($399), introduction of a tablet hybrid with a dedicated stylus and exclusion of the headphone jack on the Pixel 2. Google even sells a $20 dongle to connect regular headphone jacks to the Pixel 2. That more than doubles Apple’s $9 headphone jack dongle. If that’s not a highjacking of Apple’s DNA, I don’t know what is.

These moves aren’t to beat Apple, but to provide an alternative in a market Apple created. That in and of itself is Google’s ultimate goal. It’s just picking up some of the would-be Apple customers that prefer Google’s ecosystem with exactly the same products.

You don’t want Apple’s expensive earphones or luxury home speaker? No problem, buy Google’s instead.

Will Google be as successful as Apple? Unlikely. Apple has a clear lead in selling hardware while Google is just a newbie. Just take a look at the paltry sales numbers from the first Pixel phones. But Google doesn’t care about sales right now, it just wants to make products as it continues to establish its hardware business, which now involves a lot of people from HTC.

Copying is not sexy nor innovative, but it is damn lucrative. Apple figured this out over a decade ago, and now Google has, too.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/10/04/googles-hardware-plan-is-to-follow-apple-and-its-genius/