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While indecisive Google is playing catch-up with Apple, Samsung plows ahead (Pixel Fold, Pixel Watch, Pixel 6)

Updated: Jun 03, 2022, 9:33 AM

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This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

While indecisive Google is playing catch-up with Apple, Samsung plows ahead (Pixel Fold, Pixel Watch

The mobile tech business is a highly competitive one. It's not enough to just create good products, but to be among the first and the boldest in offering something that really grabs people's attention.

And trying to be unique and different is a huge financial risk, just ask Samsung. The Korean company has been a vicious Apple competitor for many years now; unstoppable.

However there's a third big name in our wonderful world of mobile tech, with a ton of money and power behind it, that you'd think would be just as big of an Apple challenger as Samsung is. But alas, Google is regularly so slow and indecisive to actually release competitive products in time, that it likely missed its chance to ever be an equal to the other two, in terms of worldwide presence.

Google keeps flip-flopping between releasing a foldable Pixel Fold and not

The Oppo Find N (left) and Galaxy Z Fold 3 (right) are just two of several folding options we have in 2022, the market's growing

The Google Pixel Fold has now been on the burner for a couple of years. Since the first leaks we got that Google is working on a Galaxy Fold challenger, that it could still release before Apple, things kept changing.

The name of the Pixel foldable alone changed internally from the initially-presumed "Google Pixel Fold" to "Google Passport", to most recently – the "Pixel Notepad". What else changed a surprising amount of times is its presumed release date.

Google kept delaying and delaying this folding phone, reportedly because it wasn't sure it had much to offer in order to compete with the Galaxy Z Fold 3. And while that makes sense – as the Z Fold 3 is awesome, following several generational improvements – imagine if Samsung was like that. Not releasing the first Z Fold at all, because it had durability issues and foldables weren't even a thing back then. Nah, what Samsung did is go ahead and pull the trigger, then gradually began not only putting the foldable phone market on the map, but dominating it too.

Would Google have lost some money if it actually released the Pixel Fold last year? Probably. Would it have beaten the Galaxy Z Fold 3 in sales, or even availability? For sure not. But it's not like Samsung was cashing in a ton of checks from the first Z Fold. It took a bold risk and consistency for this idea to pay off, instead of staying indecisive and potentially letting somebody else steal the folding phone market.

Google took nearly four years to release its own smartwatch, the Pixel Watch

Why did it take so long?

In January of 2019, Google paid $40 million to buy a smartwatch IP from Fossil. You won't need your detective glasses to see that what Google bought would eventually turn into the upcoming Google Pixel Watch. The Pixel Watch will reportedly be packing a four-year-old Samsung processor inside too – the Exynos 9110 from 2018.

Could Google have released the Pixel Watch back in 2019, if it was a more decisive and quick-to-action type of company? That processor would've been current as heck back then, not so much now.

But no, Google took its time. The Google Pixel Watch is slated to come out this fall, 2022, many, many years after Apple has conquered the smartwatch market, with Samsung dominating what's left.

Google waited too long to make its own unique smartphone (Pixel 6)

The first Google Pixel (left) and the iPhone 6 (right)

In recent years, Google started releasing Pixel-branded smartphones. The first Google Pixel came out in 2016, manufactured by HTC. It enjoyed rave reviews, but it didn't exactly set the world on fire with a unique design or identity. In fact, it looked suspiciously a bit too much like an iPhone 6 from the front, which had already been out for two years.

A couple of years later with the Pixel 3 XL Google really dropped the ball in my eyes, by giving it the most hideous, largest notch ever, just because Apple's iPhones had recently adopted a notch.

The Pixel 3 XL's giant notch looks as shocked as I was when I first saw it; I legit thought it was a meme at first, a fake phone design

It was the equivalent of a no-name Chinese iPhone knock-off from a design perspective, and really spoke to how little Google tried designing its own identity, instead aiming to trick your grandma into thinking the Pixel was an iPhone.

It's not all bad, though. Last year it finally happened – with the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, the search engine giant finally came up with its own, bold smartphone identity. Those phones were unmistakably Google Pixels, not an Apple clone, not a Samsung clone, nothing like that.

The Pixel 6 Pro is unmistakable in a crowd

Should this really have taken over five years? Probably not. But at least it's looking like the next Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will keep this unique identity, so Google is on the right path now. Apple has a look, Samsung has a look, and now Google has a look.

Meanwhile Samsung was first (among the three) to release a foldable, and dominates the market now

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 (left) and Z Flip 3 (right)

So, Google is quite the large company. Its parent Alphabet owns some of the most popular websites in the world, like the search engine of the same name, and of course – YouTube. But Samsung has a military department. It develops so many types of consumer and private tech, dominates so many markets, that you may be surprised to know it's actually in the top ten highest global brand value companies. If you thought Google has cash, well, Samsung isn't exactly scraping to get by either.

And while both companies can afford to take risks and try new things on the consumer tech market, Samsung actually goes ahead and does it all the time.

No years lost due to second-guessing like Google. As soon as images and videos of the Royole FlexPai foldable prototype smartphone out of China got viral online, and people seemed to like the idea behind it, Samsung went to work. Or, just as likely, it already knew about it before the rest of us, and by that time it was halfway done working on a similar product! In any case, Samsung made and released the first Galaxy Fold mere months later. Now that's seizing the moment!

And as we covered, the Galaxy Z Fold series, alongside the Galaxy Z Flip series went on to dominate the folding smartphone market. With them, Samsung single-handedly made foldables mainstream.

Google? Again, like we said – continues being indecisive about even attempting to go against a challenger like Samsung. But should it not at least try?

Samsung has been releasing smartwatches for a while too, keeping Apple on its toes

The Galaxy Watch 4

While Google's first smartwatch is still on its way, Samsung started clapping back at Apple and its Apple Watch almost immediately, by stepping up the production of its own Galaxy Gear and Galaxy Watch products.

And according to the latest reports, in 2022 Samsung holds the second-highest percentage of smartwatch market share, which is about 10%. First is of course Apple, while Google's not even on the map yet.

Samsung's latest Galaxy Watch 4 was released late last year, alongside other variants for people to choose from, namely the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. Meanwhile the Google Pixel Watch is still months from release, and by many accounts, it won't offer anything special over Samsung's smartwatch that's already been out for many months.

In fact, the two smartwatches seem to be quite similar in their circular design with fairly large bezels, along with the fact that they're both Wear OS 3 watches. Yet if Google doesn't mind releasing a lackluster Samsung smartwatch competitor late, how come it's so afraid of doing the same with a foldable?

What do you think – should Google be more assertive against Samsung and Apple, or will it never become their true equal?

Unfortunately for fans of Google hardware, the company has mostly been a follower and not a leader.

Apple keeps doing its own thing without worrying about keeping up with trends, and might even introduce a whole new, huge wearable tech category to the masses soon – augmented reality – with its upcoming Apple glasses. And Samsung already brought a new trend to the mainstream with its folding phones.

These two companies are a perfect pair of frenemies that complete each other, and we need them to continue being competitive and make new, and better products. They're like the Batman and the Joker – if you've seen the 2008 movie The Dark Knight, you can probably imagine Samsung telling Apple: "I don't wanna kill you. You complete me. What would I do without you?"

The question is, where does Google belong in the action-packed Hollywood movie of mobile consumer tech? Will such a powerful company like it ultimately remain behind Apple and Samsung, afraid to compete with Samsung and just now stepping away from imitating Apple's hardware design?

Or are we in for a nice surprise when the Pixel Watch and next year's recently-teased Google tablet finally come out? And even more so when it comes time for the new Pixel phones? What do you think?

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Rado, a tech enthusiast with a love for mobile devices, brings his passion for Android and iPadOS to PhoneArena. His tech journey began with MP3 players and has evolved to include tinkering with Android tablets and iPads, even running Linux and Windows 95 on them. Beyond tech, Rado is a published author, music producer, and PC game developer. His professional work on iPads, from producing songs to editing videos, showcases his belief in their capabilities. Rado looks forward to the future of mobile tech, particularly in augmented reality and multi-screen smartphones.