Samsung is expected to release several new smartwatch products on August 11, including the widely rumored Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. However, the company that has benefited the most from the success of these watches is not Samsung, but Google.
Over the years, nothing in the Android ecosystem can match the quality and utility of Apple’s hands. As the development speed of mobile phones seems to be getting slower and slower, the development speed of wearable devices still has a chance to grow. If Android users do not have a viable alternative, Apple is more likely to cannibalize the Android ecosystem.
Now it seems that Google is finally ready to finally make a strong attempt to return to the wearable device market. However, despite the acquisition of Fitbit and rumors that Google is developing some kind of Pixel watch, Samsung will be the first company to launch a Wear OS 3 smartwatch.
At the Google conference earlier this year, Google and Samsung announced cooperation in this regard. Essentially, Samsung is abandoning its customized Tizen operating system, instead of contributing some of its content to the Google Wear OS 3 operating system. Both Google and Samsung promise that Wear OS 3 smartwatches will have better battery life, better software experience, and stronger third-party application support.
With Wear OS stagnating before, OnePlus, Realme, OPPO, Fitbit, and other companies have all turned to proprietary simplified platforms that lack the features consumers expect in smartwatches. Therefore, for Samsung and Google, the pressure is considerable, they have to make a pair of smartwatches that are good enough.
Obviously, we will have to wait for the evaluation of these watches to see if Google and Samsung can meet this requirement, but Samsung’s first Wear OS 3 watch is unlikely to be comparable to the Apple Watch ecosystem. As of now, the only Wear OS 3 watches we know of that will definitely appear are these two products from Samsung.
Samsung will become the sole supplier of Wear OS 3 smartwatches for some time. This means that when it comes to competition with Apple Watch, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch will be the only competitor. With Google’s acquisition of Fitbit, the situation has become more complicated. Google has stated that it will not stop using its own health tracking system, Google Fit. This means that these watches can theoretically have three different fitness tracking software options.
Samsung, Google and Fitbit. Consumers have more choices, but the price is that the software is a bit messy, which is not necessarily a bad trade-off. Competition is a good thing, but, as a new standard-setter for Android smartwatches, I hope Samsung will not push non-Samsung users too much into the Galaxy ecosystem.
