Author: Wei Xu, Editor: Chen Deng new head Figure: Vision China.
After Google reached a smart wearable device maker Fitbit’s acquisition agreement for more than a month, it was reported that Facebook had three contacts and multiple bids for Fitbit, but because it was also the highest offer of $ 7.30 per share, It was lower than Google’s $ 7.35 per share (total price of about $ 2.1 billion) and lost to the latter.
As soon as the news comes out, it can be said that it once again stirred the nerves of related practitioners.
Before that, Amazon was once regarded by the industry as a strong bidder for Fitbit-since the development of the voice assistant Alexa, Echo Buds, Echo Frames, Loop and other series of Alexa-enabled Wearable devices have promoted Amazon’s further penetration into this market. If Fitbit is purchased, it can provide Amazon with a smartwatch platform and intellectual property that continue to develop, and quickly fill key gaps in its new wearable product portfolio.
But in the end, these possible assumptions that existed ended with Fitbit being captured by Google.
Some analysts predict that under the strong wind of the global wearable device market’s transformation into the professional medical and health field, this acquisition may unveil the war of giants in the wearable device field.
After all, compared to Facebook and Amazon who entered the game late, the top five wearable device marketers were Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung and Fitbit. What changes will Google bring to the wearables market when Google officially replaces Fitbit into the top five?
Fitbit falls, wearable track will smoke soon
No one expected that, as one of the earliest pioneers in the wearable market, Fitbit, once a giant in this field, will eventually reach the end in the form of selling themselves.
In 2007, Fitbit was established in San Francisco, USA. This wearable device company with an initial intention of “focusing on the health of all human beings” has focused on simpler, more specific and targeted products from the beginning, and announced its first smart wearable device shortly after its establishment — —In 2009, the fitness tracker Fitbit Tracker was launched.
This wearable motion recorder can be regarded as redefining traditional sports wearables. Based on Fitbit’s innovation on sports bracelets, the consumption boom brought by it lasted for many years. During this period, the sports bracelet was a well-deserved traffic star, and the smart watch that has prevailed since then has not yet made its mark.
According to statistics from the well-known analysis company Statista, global smartwatch shipments in 2014 were 3.3 million, of which Samsung, the number one, shipped 1.2 million. In comparison, in the sports bracelet market, Fitbit’s shipments alone have reached 19 million.
However, the freshness and sales myth brought by Fitbit’s single-function sports bracelet did not continue. Stifel analyst Jim Duffy said in 2016, “Fitbit is destined to slow down after experiencing phenomenal growth, but this situation occurs earlier than expected. This is why smartwatches are indispensable for sports hands Market share squeeze. “
After the Android system successfully popularized smart phones and made hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide experience the fun of smart hardware, under the dual blessing of smart phones and the Internet, it was based on a richer content ecosystem. The rapid rise of smartwatches in the wearable market has naturally begun to shift from sports bracelets to smartwatches (though there have also been a variety of hardware forms such as headphones and glasses, but they are not considered mainstream in terms of sales).
Around 2013, well-known Internet companies at home and abroad, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc., have set their sights on the hardware of smart watches: thanks to the smarts launched by Google in 2014 Watch operating system Android Wear, Samsung, LG, Motorola and other manufacturers have cooperated with Google to launch the first generation of Android smart watches; Xiaomi and Huawei also released the first wearable products in 2014; as for the industry oligarch Apple The first wearable, Apple Watch, was successfully unveiled in September 2014.
Although these wisdomIn the early days, the performance of the smart watch market was not good. However, with the development of products and markets by companies such as Apple and Samsung, smart watches began to dominate the wearable market. As for the sports bracelets with overlapping attributes, they were hit hard. First and foremost is the Fitbit with a sports bracelet.
Related data shows that worldwide shipments of wearable devices in Q1 2019 reached 49.6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 55.2%. Among them, wristband wearable devices occupy the majority of the market with a 63.2% share.
Although Fitbit has also tried to sell smart watches, it has not changed the trend. The impact from overseas has also further accelerated the process of shrinking the market share of Fitbit products-the ultra-high cost performance of Xiaomi and Huawei products has more competitive advantages. According to the 2019 Q1 global wearable device market report, Fitbit ranks fifth with a market share of only 5.9%, while the top four are Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi.
Only from the data point of view, as Fitbit withdraws from wearable devices in a manner acquired by Google, Google will replace it as the fifth largest wearable device manufacturer in the world.
Although it’s already in the game, Google still has something to hide.
In fact, for Google, it may be more appropriate to regard the acquisition of Fitbit as a long-planned recovery of “lost land”.
Looking back at the different development opportunities between Google and Apple, the earliest differences should be:
The former is committed to enabling more OEMs to use Android Wear, a smartwatch operating system launched by themselves. As can be seen from the name, the system is a derivative of the Android system, which also meets Google’s definition of a smart watch-a smart watch is an extension of a smart phone or a “tool” that is inseparable from an Android smart phone. .
The latter chooses to independently produce smart wearable products and is equipped with a more independent watch OS operating system. In order to completely separate watch OS from iOS, Apple even hesitated to create a separate app store for it, even though there were not many applications for the system at the time.
At that time, there were not many vendors who chose Google operating system. Including Asus, Huawei, Samsung, Intel, MediaTek, Sony, LG, Broadcom, Motorola, HTC, Qualcomm, MIPS and other brands, more than 50 watch products equipped with this system.
But when the single hardware product form of the sports bracelet cannot meet the needs of the market, it also forces the software to make corresponding upgrade iterations. Compared with Google products, Apple’s software and hardware ecosystem for wearable devices is obviously more complete and rich.
So after 2015, those brands that have been equipped with the Google operating system have basically lost momentum: Motorola moto 360 watches have suspended product development since the second generation, LG has continued to push new products but the market share is too small, Samsung has changed To use the self-developed operating system Tizen OS …
Perhaps realizing that Android Wear is no longer as bad as before, Google announced in 2018 that it would be renamed Wear OS and tried to fully regulate it. Not only that, Google also bought Fossil, a new smart watch manufacturer, for $ 40 million in early 2019, and it seems that it will end up creating smart watch products. The recent acquisition of Fitbit undoubtedly confirms this.
Although Google has never launched its own smartwatch, there is news that behind the scenes a team is already working on research and development. Rick Osterlo, Google ’s senior vice president of devices and services, also said, “Buying a Fitbit is an opportunity to invest more in Wear OS and introduce Google-made wearables to the market.”
However, Google’s road to entry is obviously not easy.
On the one hand, although Google has clearly stated in the transaction announcement, it will not sell personal or health data of Fitbit users. But for Google, which has a long history of “data collection behavior”, some Fitbit users do not agree with such a commitment, and also claim to directly abandon Fitbit products.
On the other hand, whether Google can successfully transform from a pure system supplier to a competitor that is both a system and a product like Apple is a little unknown.
It is very difficult to achieve both system and product-Google has previously tried, after its launch of Android successfully dominated the global mobile operating system,The acquisition of Motorola entered the smart phone market but failed miserably. What’s more, given the market performance of Google Wear OS in the wearable device market, do you know that this time it will not repeat the same mistakes?
A giant scuffle or will it be triggered?
Obviously, this is a very difficult development path, but Google has to go.
For large consumer technology companies such as Google and Apple, whether or not they can gain a foothold in the wearable device market today is a crucial thing-with the rise of big data, wearable health devices are gaining Mobile user information and key ways to collect potentially lucrative human biometric data are also the basis for subsequent expansion into multiple fields such as healthcare, sports and fitness services.
After clarifying that Google has a strong intention to enter the industry, the industry also has extensive speculation about this: This acquisition may kick off the battle of giants in the wearable device field.
Some analysts even believe that “through the acquisition of Fitbit, Google has become the closest competitor to Apple in the market.” Is it possible for Google to shake Apple’s oligopoly position? The answer is of course no. At least in the short term, Apple’s position is solid. Today, Apple Watch accounts for more than half of the smartwatch market. As long as there are no epoch-making products, Apple basically has no possibility of being surpassed.
As for the first echelon of Samsung, although its software ecosystem is far inferior to that of Apple, there are also data showing that smart watch products from Apple and Samsung are currently the mainstay of leading sales growth in the North American market, and its shipments The volume was 2.2 million units and 400,000 units, respectively, and sales increased by 32% and 121% year-on-year.
Since the North American market cannot be expected for the time being, is it possible for the Chinese market?
“At present, the domestic wearable field is still a fast-growing emerging market, and users are not expected to have high functionality and price of the device.” Some industry insiders have said that compared with some mature overseas mainstream mainstream In the wearable device market, users are even looking forward to having a more “big and comprehensive” system. Most domestic consumers who buy wearable devices are still early adopters.
Therefore, although overseas consumers do not buy the ultra-high cost-effectiveness of Huawei and Xiaomi products, they are more inclined to choose “big and full” Apple and Samsung, but Huawei and Xiaomi products have also used this to dominate the domestic market. for many years.
Of course, Google also has the possibility of copying the cost-effectiveness of domestic brands, and it is more important than the latter.It has a certain degree of advantages-the current competition and competition between wearable device manufacturers not only stay in the hardware field such as technology and functions, but also the more critical software field of the ecosystem.
Look at Apple and Samsung, and even the new Google, the watch OS, Tizen OS, and Wear OS used in its products are all self-developed operating systems. Looking at Huawei and Xiaomi, although there are sounds from Huawei HarmonyOS that will be used in smart watches, its current product launch uses Google Android Wear, and Xiaomi’s MIUI For Watch is also based on the depth of Wear OS custom made.
From the perspective of software and hardware ecology, Google is similar to Apple and Samsung, and can even be said to be at the forefront of Huawei and Xiaomi.
It is foreseeable that when Google really enters the wearable track as a competitor in the future, because of its layout of software and hardware, although it does have a certain competitive advantage, it may not affect The situation has had too much impact. What’s more interesting now is, can Google really make a good wearable device product?