Google’s gamble on becoming a mainstream handset maker, courtesy of Motorola Mobility, failed, as Microsoft’s similar move is likely to do. New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has never seemed wholeheartedly behind the acquisition of Nokia’s devices, which he inherited from predecessor Steve Ballmer, and said rather pointedly at this week’s Re/code conference: “We are a software company at the end of the day.’
He added: “I definitely don’t want to compete with our OEMs. I want to create categories.” This is at the heart of the device strategy for both Microsoft and Google (and other firms which need to drive the direction of post-PC devices, not just follow the tide). Owning a conventional handset company does more harm to a platform than good, by setting up conflicts with key OEM partners. But creating new form factors, which the OEM and ODM community can then adopt for the mass market, is the task of market makers, and something Microsoft has been doing for years.
Nokia, however, is unlikely to be the right vehicle if Nadella wants to turn it into a hotbed of new device R&D. He claimed he does not want to “just run it like Nokia, the OEM of our phones’, but to use it to create new directions, but Nokia is, in fact, a mass market OEM, with the baggage and structures that brings, and most of its innovative R&D soul has been left behind in Helsinki ‘ which may, ironically, see the remaining Nokia company engaging in its own development of new gadgets, for emerging markets like wearables, ahead of its former handset division.
As Nadella put it: “In order to be in the hunt for experiences, you have to build hardware. You have to be all-in to create demand for these experiences.” He added: ‘We have to build something big. All of us are on the hunt for the next big device platform’ ‘ though he is not keen on making a bid acquisition to do this. Referring to Facebook’s $2bn deal to acquire virtual reality headset maker Oculus, he commented: “There are a lot cheaper ways for me to get there without spending $2bn.”
Nadella may find that building futuristic hardware and user experience is better done elsewhere in Microsoft than its new Nokia unit though. Google has certainly seemed more creative on this front since it decided to sell Motorola to Lenovo ‘ though hanging onto some of the more cutting edge ideas, including the important Project Ara for modular, customizable devices. In addition to that, it is branching out into all kinds of next generation hardware, keen to showcase what can be done with Android and encourage OEMs to adopt new form factors which will stimulate usage of the web and Google services.
The driverless car is the latest such breakthrough to be demonstrated, a dramatic addition to an R&D portfolio which also includes Ara, the Project Tango tablets, Google Glass, new Chrome-driven designs, and the increasingly sophisticated AI engine which delivers data to all these products.
Co-founder Sergey Brin unveiled the car and said his firm would follow the same pattern in this segment as it had with Android and the Nexus devices ‘ creating initial designs to showcase what could be done, but then working with a variety of partners for actual commercial releases. “We’ve worked with partners to build these prototypes and we expect to work with partners in the future,” he said at the Re/code event. One potential partner he mentioned by name as taxi hiring service Uber, whose data is now integrated with Google Maps, and into which Google Ventures plowed $250m last year.
The concept cars do not have a steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator pedal or other physical features because software and sensors do all the work, said Google, which has built about 100 prototypes. Chris Urmson, director of the self-driving car project, said: ‘The vehicles will be very basic ‘ we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible ‘ but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button.’ The cars will not be hitting the market in the near future, but Google will run pilot programs in Silicon Valley within two years, it said.
Intel, too, needs to drive next generation devices and so ensure that its technologies remain essential. Just after Google showed off its concept steering wheel-less car, Intel has announced hardware and software which will support better automotive safety and infotainment today, and move towards driverless vehicles in future.
The new family of In-Vehicle Solutions products aim to help carmakers and their supply chains to “quickly and easily deliver in-vehicle experiences”, said Intel, by providing a complete platform, with processors, operating system and development kits. This pre-integrated, pre-tested and application-ready approach, so powerful in low cost handsets, will also reduce time to market for auto infotainment systems by over a year, claims the chip giant, and reduce cost by up to 50%.
The first available products focus on in-vehicle information (IVI) and entertainment systems, along with advanced driver assistance capabilities. Future additions will center on advanced driving experiences and self-driving cars.
“We are combining our breadth of experience in consumer electronics and enterprise IT with a holistic automotive investment across product development, industry partnerships, and groundbreaking research efforts,” said Doug Davis, corporate VP of Intel’s internet of things group, in a statement. “Our goal is to fuel the evolution from convenience features available in the car today to enhanced safety features of tomorrow and eventually self-driving capabilities.”
Meanwhile, tablets are a more immediate area for innovation, and Google plans to produce about 4,000 prototype devices as part of Project Tango, focusing particularly on advanced computer vision. According to Wall Street Journal sources, the 7-inch models will feature two back cameras, infrared depth sensors and “advanced software that can capture precise three-dimensional images of objects’. They are likely to appear in time for the annual I/O developer conference at the end of June and are another example of how Google is creating concept products in order to drive, rather than follow, in the latest areas of user experience, stimulating the ecosystem to tempt users to go online in new ways.
Project Tango will be important in this area because it is looking to create a next generation user experience centered around Google’s services, particularly Maps, and therefore charged with increasing ad and service revenues in future. The company is working on new approaches to maps and search which rely heavily on 3D, computer vision, deep context awareness and machine learning. Google has already issued 200 prototype developer kits for handsets featuring brand new Maps based on models built from 3D scans.
This is being used as the foundation for new applications in areas such as indoor navigation (for the visually impaired, for example); and games that use physical space and augmented reality; and Google is also working on new algorithms for processing data from many types of sensors to improve accuracy of targeting and location awareness.
It will be interesting to see, in its hardware activities, how much control Google seeks of the differentiating components. It has been getting closer to chip start-up Movidius, whose Myriad 1 processor is used in Project Tango devices and allows them to use 3D sensors at very low power levels. The coming year could make a star of such companies, as some of Project Tango’s vision and mapping innovations start to filter into commercial products, including wearables, from Google’s partners.
The biggest challenge for Tango, and Google’s whole advanced technology group, is to make sure the search giant gets to key breakthroughs ahead of those partners, so they are forced to work with it, as they did on Android handsets. Samsung, Sony and others have increasingly been going their own way in emerging sectors like wearables, even if they are using Android as the base (Samsung has even broken that tie, turning to Tizen for smartwatches). As seen in Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift, big players are keen to do their own development in strategic technologies which will create new applications and the next wave of mobile user experience. Tango, Glass, the driverless car project and other initiatives have the heavy burden of keeping Google a step ahead of its own ecosystem over the coming years.