Previously, at the beginning of 2021, when Google announced a high-profile smart watch technology cooperation with Samsung, we Sanyi Life analyzed this.
At that time, in our opinion, this seemingly "unequal" cooperation, although Samsung suffered a loss and gave up their self-developed wearable operating system, but in fact, considering Samsung's dominant position in technology and the market, as well as the weakness of Google's previous smart watch ecosystem. We predicted that in the end, this cooperation would likely evolve into Samsung's "strong expulsion" of other smart wearable device brands, and make them enter a situation of continuous "marginalization" in this ecosystem.
As the time comes to the spring of 2024, the prophecy of our Sanyi life at that time is turning into a somewhat embarrassing and ridiculous fact with a intensity that we did not expect.
Just a few days ago, Mobvoi announced an operating system test plan for its TicWatch Pro5 smartwatch in overseas markets. According to their announcement, they are about to start preparing for the closed beta recruitment of Wear OS 4.0 for this smartwatch. According to relevant sources, Mobvoi gave strict confidentiality requirements for this new version of the system in the form for recruiting testers.
However, if you have paid attention to Samsung, or Google's own smartwatch product line, you will know that Wear OS 4.0 is not a new system, it has been announced as early as May 2023, and was first launched by the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series in the fall of 2023, and has been used in the previous generation Watch 4 and Watch 5 series soon after. At the same time, the current Google Pixel Watch has also used this system.
For example, if a smartphone manufacturer suddenly announced that it would "update Android 14" to its flagship model in April 2024, would everyone feel a little "did you just wake up"?
But that's not all. In fact, not long ago, Mobvoi just pushed the Wear OS 3.0 update to many of its previous high-end smart watch products. In the smartphone market, it is equivalent to just getting the Android 13 update package deployment in 2024, which is really too "sluggish".
But to be fair, don't be in a hurry to laugh at Mobti. You know, on the one hand, since Wear OS 3.0, Google's smartwatch operating system has actually undergone huge changes at the code level, which is essentially a bit like a "hybrid" of Google's Android system and Samsung's Tizen system.
So since then, almost every version of Wear OS has been launched by Samsung, followed by Google, and other manufacturers have been asking for their own blessings. For example, Mobvoi, at least manufacturers who can update the system for old products, are definitely technology pioneers and leaders in the "non-Samsung" Google smart watch camp. After all, most other manufacturers are simply unable to solve the adaptation problem of the new version of Wear OS, so they can only choose to mess up.
As the earliest pioneer of Google Watch, Moto can now only make some specious "big bracelets".
What's more, looking at the entire smart watch market, you will find that since Samsung joined the Wear OS ecosystem, on the surface, it seems that Wear OS smart watches have suddenly "turned over", and the market share has suddenly skyrocketed. But in fact, in this process, the "diversity" of Wear OS has not been significantly improved, and even many manufacturers who were previously influential in this system have chosen to withdraw and no longer launch smartwatch products based on Google's Wear OS system.
Friends who have read our previous relevant analysis may not be difficult to guess that the reason for the withdrawal of these manufacturers is most likely because they either can't technically adapt to the new version of Wear OS, or they find that since Samsung entered the game, their own "Google Watch" has become impossible to sell at all.
Wear OS failed because of its unified hardware strategy
Of course, this is not surprising. Because as we all know, "Google Watch" has long pursued a closed ecological chain policy. In the past, all manufacturers used the same SoC and the same system version, and at most everyone only had differences in appearance and UI design, and even many times the system updates did not need to be taken care of by themselves, and Google would handle it.
Samsung has solved the chronic problem of "Google Watch", but it has also led to its own monopoly
But as soon as Samsung entered the game, "Google Watch" used Samsung's self-developed SoC, equipped with an operating system developed by Samsung and Google, and the health algorithm and functions are exclusive, and the system can be updated once a month. In this way, for the former smart watch manufacturers, Samsung's existence is completely a "dimensionality reduction strike". Therefore, when the gap between technology and experience is too large, it is natural that it cannot be sold.
However, from Google's point of view, this situation is a bit awkward. Because this is actually equivalent to Google taking its own product system and past partners as Samsung's backing. Although this is completely expected by our three easy lives, it is clear that this is by no means the "cooperation result" that Google wants to see.
Perhaps because of this, at the beginning of this year, we have successively seen a number of industry leading manufacturers, including Xiaomi Watch2 Pro, Xiaomi Watch2, OnePlus Watch2, etc., release smart watch products equipped with Wear OS in overseas markets. Compared with Samsung's Galaxy Watch family, they are not only cheaper, but also have many features that are not far behind, and some even have advantages in terms of battery life.
Obviously, compared with those manufacturers who are "retreating", or Mobvoi, which is still struggling to support, these head manufacturers have much stronger technical strength, and are also expected to really make their "Google Watch" product line bigger and stronger, and to share a piece of the pie with Samsung. And for Google, this is naturally the situation they want to see the most since the Wear OS ecosystem "came back from the dead".
[The picture in this article comes from the Internet]