073 - Carolina Milanesi - Google + Samsung + Fitbit = A True Apple Watch Competitor?

Guest: Carolina Milanesi - President & Principal Analyst at Creative Strategies; Founder of Heart of Tech

Topic: Google + Samsung + Fitbit = A True Apple Watch Competitor?

Carolina joins Dave this week on the podcast to discuss the news coming out of Google's I/O developer conference that Samsung and Google will be merging their smartwatch platforms (Samsung's Tizen and Google's Wear OS) into a unified smartwatch platform, Wear. As the two discuss, when you factor in Google's acquisition of Fitbit in January of 2021, what we're really seeing now is essentially Google, Samsung and Fitbit banding together and pooling their resources to combat Apple's dominance of the smartwatch sector. 

Google provides it's operating system, first party applications (i.e. Maps & YouTube Music), and Google Assistant, while Samsung provides its core competence - excellent hardware manufacturing and device proliferation, and Fitbit brings the unique use cases built around Fitness and health. 

As Carolina describes, this trio of companies unified together in a cohesive offering might finally offer a truly compelling Android smartwatch offering that has the potential to scale and compete head-to-head with the Apple Watch. As the two discuss, the Android ecosystem desperately needs adequate peripheral devices to complement the android handsets, as Apple's ecosystem continues to deepen its moat and switching costs via its wearables and services. 

Finally, the two talk through the broader implications of these moves, especially as it relates to the future of all wearable devices, including hearables and AR glasses, and the unique preventative health use cases that wearables continue to migrate toward.

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