Significance: After the disaster of the first Nexus handset, Google reined in its ambitions for the device market and largely used its own-brand gadgets as developer showcases. But now it is taking a radically new approach, creating two products which look like full direct-to-consumer propositions, and which are designed to drive content consumption from Google Play, in an approach which borrows heavily from Amazon’s. Gone are the days of Android Market, basically a resource for all Android partners regardless of their device and user experience. Though Google Play is still open to them, it is a firmly controlled, Google-driven experience now, and like Amazon, the search giant hopes to create devices which optimize how its media is consumed and purchased ‘ thus driving loyalty to its brand and more voracious uptake. The Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus Q social media gadget are the first products for the new strategy, but neither look sufficiently high impact to turn Google into the next Apple ‘ controlling every media screen in the home ‘ or even Amazon.
Google completed this season’s hat trick of mobile platform upgrades, unveiling its first Nexus tablet, plus the next release of Android, hard on the heels of Apple’s iOS 5 and Microsoft’s Surface/WP8 roll-outs. But while the two giants are Google’s targets, it has taken many of its tablet cues from Amazon, promising tight integration with its Google Play hub and a far smoother, socially driven user experience.
Like the Amazon Kindle Fire ‘ whose second version is widely expected next month ‘ the Asus-made Nexus 7 is a seven-inch model, priced at an affordable $199, and with Wi-Fi but not 3G. But the Fire has scored highly because of its compulsive content consumption and purchasing interface, which drives far more revenues than the tablet itself.
This is a model ‘ driven by services and media, not hardware per se ‘ which is natural to Google, but which it has failed to deliver in full with its own Android platforms to date. Recently it reasserted control over the Android media experience by converging Android Market and its other content offerings in a single hub, and imposing its own brand, Google Play, and its UI. The Nexus 7 is the first real demonstration of that strategy, on a device which, unlike partners’ models, Google controls.
Unveiled at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, the tablet runs on an Nvida quad-core Tegra 3 processor with 1280 x 800 HD display, with a pixel density of 216 pixels per inch (compared to 264ppi for Apple’s iPad HD). It also sports a 12-core graphics processing unit.
It runs the Chrome browser, which was recently brought to Android, signalling greater convergence between that platform and Google’s Chrome OS. The Nexus offers Google Currents, a mobile magazine format for news feed with integrated Google Translate, plus a front-facing 1.2-mp camera, Bluetooth, micro-USB port and NFC. Taking tips from Amazon’s Prime deals for the Fire, Google is offering several movies, books and magazine subscriptions as a starting package.
The tablet shows the search giant looking well beyond its recent strategy for its Nexus devices and establishing a fully integrated hardware/content platform, targeted at consumers. Since the failure of the original attempt to use Nexus to establish a new direct-to-consumer smartphone model, almost bypassing the carriers, Google has retreated from mass sales ambitions and positioned subsequent Nexus handsets mainly as showcases for its latest technologies, to stir up developer, user and partner interest and demonstrate what it considers to be the gold standard Android user experience.
This is seen in the new device, which shows off the upcoming Android 4.1, or JellyBean. But Nexus 7 seems to go beyond that and seek a major role in the Android ecosystem in its own right. Its content offerings hit directly at those of Apple and Amazon. The latter uses Android, but with a user experience heavily geared to its own stores, and almost divorced from Google’s. That means that it has established a rival to Google in terms of being the primary powerhouse ‘ and revenue generator ‘ from Android.
Jelly Bean claims faster performance than its predecessors by increasing the frame rate to 60fps, as part of a development called Project Butter. The processor automatically speeds up when it detects an onscreen touch, and animations for scrolling and swiping should be smoother.
The biggest area of improvement is to bring Siri-like capabilities to Google’s key search capability, as part of a project called Google Now. Jelly Bean uses a new search interface, called ‘cards’, which display combinations of information in an attractive display which can also be integrated with voice activation. The voice element also includes a predictive capability, advising users on traffic updates or restaurant recommendations and the whole experience is heavily reminiscent of Apple’s.
The SDK is now available and Jelly Bean will appear on the Nexus handsets (Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S), and the Motorola Xoom, in mid-July. Overall, it looks like what it is ‘ an upgrade for a platform which is achieving a degree of maturity and stability, but which also doesn’t need to try very hard any more. There will be more debate about the schedule for updates ‘ given that many devices do not support Ice Cream Sandwich yet ‘ than about the pros and cons of the mainly incremental new features.
Somewhat overshadowed by the tablet was another sign that Google wants to be a device maker, despite the huge amount of risk that entails ‘ an unfamiliar business model and cost base, conflicts with hardware partners and the wrong brand associations. The Nexus Q is the search giant’s real consumer electronics gadget, a ball-shaped Android product specifically designed for streaming media from Google Play and integrating that with social networking features. This may be primarily a showcase device, to stimulate new directions for Android devices beyond the handset ‘ though Google has in the past been stand-offish about the CE industry’s efforts to harness its OS, keeping its own activities firmly focused on phones and tablets.
But it suggests three key new elements of the Google strategy ‘ to create an all-round home device experience as Apple is trying to do, with TVs, phones and various third screens, plus streaming from the cloud to any of them; to enhance Google Play to be the centrepiece of users’ content life, as Microsoft is trying to do with Xbox; and to diffentiate its experience in social networking, an area where it has struggled to make an impact, by adding optimized hardware. The problem is, it lacks the Apple-style design flair which would encourage consumers to buy an additional gadget on top of all the others which help access and distribute content in the home ‘ especially with a price tag of $299. The Q is controlled by Android tablets or smartphone, and has high definition interfaces to plug directly into speakers and flatscreen TVs. It has a micro HDMI output, an HDMI cable, optical audio port, Ethernet, and speaker connections; an integrated 25-watt amplifier, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC.