Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What does the Google-Fitbit deal mean for Wear OS?”.
Before we start today’s video, if you would like to check out the full original article, please check out the video description where there’ll be a link to see scott brown’s feature on androidauthority.com. Google recently acquired one of the biggest names in wearable tech fitbit. The 2.1 billion dollar acquisition saw the big g purchase its latest of over 240 companies in its lifetime. For the uninitiated, fitbit is a fitness tech brand. It’S been around for 13 years and has typically specialized in fitness wearables that track metrics like step count and heart rate, while communicating with your phone, so that you can track your stats in an app or third-party connected ones for a while, it was actually known for Its minimalist fitness bands that send all the tracked information to your smartphone, but, more recently, it’s gone with full-on smart watches, such as the hugely popular versa series.
Now google already owns a wearable platform. It’S called wear os. It runs on smart watches, with larger displays, as opposed to fitness, trackers and smaller smartwatches, so sure the two os’s might be rather similar, but they’re not intended for exactly the same purpose. However, wear os hasn’t been the most loved software over the past couple of years. Owing to its lack of updates and oversight from google, because that’s the main issue, the consumer trust just isn’t there, because it feels like google, isn’t bothered enough or interested enough in the product to keep up with the maintenance. So could google’s fitbit acquisition be a new chapter in the wear os book, or could it signal bad things for the platform? Well, there seem to be three likely outcomes of this whole thing.
One google abandons where os and puts all of its eggs in the fitbit basket. Two google merges the two os’s together, creating a best of both kind of thing and three wear os and fitbit os continue to exist on their own. At the same time, let’s break those down, starting with google abandoning wear os. This actually seems to be the most likely outcome.
Google has a huge list of killed products. In fact, there’s even a website called killedbygoogle.com, which has a comprehensive list of products axed by the big g and the list seems to grow every single year. Like i said earlier, wear os is kind of hated on by a lot of the android community, but it does have a comprehensive, app list to be fair, which allows for flexibility and innovation. The issue it’s pretty resource heavy, which means that wear os devices don’t tend to last a week at a time like fitbit devices, like the versa 3 do now.
Fitbit os seems very resource efficient, especially given the lower powered silicon that it runs on. But herein lies the problem sure the two could merge, but it wouldn’t make much sense, because fitbit devices would need to utilize more powerful processors which would take away from the fitbit’s typically fantastic battery life. Fitbit os is designed to run on its lower tier hardware anyway.
Even the fitbit versa, 3, the company’s top spec model doesn’t match the top wear os or apple smart watches when it comes to the raw power and that’s fine for fitbit os, because it’s comparably light, but it wouldn’t work for the heavier wear, os and finally, wear Os and fitbit os existing simultaneously. This one probably results in the best for everyone that has a wear os or fitbit os device, but it’s probably the least likely outcome, but there’s also an issue. If it doesn’t happen, see a lot of smartwatch makers like fossil and mobvoi rely on wear os to keep their watches going.
So without that software support from google going down the line, a lot of devices seem to become redundant. It kind of makes sense for google to let wear os continue on its let’s face it not perfect path, while it focuses on fitbit and what it wants from that company. But at one point or another, google would have to pull the plug on something that it’s not invested in and that’s not performing as well as it needs to, and that brings us back to our first scenario, where google kills off wear os. Whatever happens, it seems like the google fitbit dealer is bad news for wear os fans, because it’s something for google’s wearable team to shift its focus to wear os has been in bad shape for a while now, and this could be the straw to break the camel’s Back and with that guys, i’m going to leave today’s video here, like i said at the beginning of the video, if you want to check out the full original article, i will leave a link in the video description to take you to androidauthoritygood.com, where c scott brown Has his feature whilst you’re done now, please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one and let us know in the comments what you think: i’ve been ryan thomas with android authority and i’ll catch.
You later .