Yesterday a piece of news from the Wall Street Journal hit the markets – Google intends to launch a tablet simillar to the Apple IPad as functionalities. And of course, its stock increased a bit.
Whilst this is good news for Google and bad news for Apple, I wonder why people are surprised at the news. After all, Google is the larges internet player on the planet Earth and it should go on that direction. What surprises me is why Google is trying to launch such a device so late…
…which brings my thoughts to the idea that in gadget terms, Google is an Apple follower. But not in the bad sense of the word. Surprisingly enough, Google might have the ability to take a newly launched product and make it better than its no.1 competitors. It is the old strategy of the largest FMCG producer in the World, Procter & Gamble. But whilst |P&G does this since forever and has some associated risks, Google seems to have found a nice recipy to overcome the issues.
It seems to me that Google waits for the commoditization of a gadget, and then launches it in a dramatically improved version. This way, it can wait until the market reacts to the new gadget, and then decide if it goes into that segment or not.
If this sounds a bit exaggerated, look at the Android mobile phone. Google launched an improved Iphone basically – superior characteristics (higher resolution screen, better phot camera, better OS) and then started to build on the other IPhone’s main competitive advantage – the ITunes app store. It has managed to build a comparable set of phone applications and voila – recently it was announced that the Android mobile phone sales exceeded the IPhone ones.
Whilst Google still has to convince some large mobile phone carriers to adopt its flagship mobile phone, with a table PC things might be simpler. Much simpler. IPad looks nice but lacks many functionalities which you should have in a normal tablet PC. Therefore, Google’s job is easier here. And it can add the expertise of being the largest internet player on Earth, which makes a good argument.
It all remains to be proved in practice, right?