The war with Apple's iPhone is on.
Google just announced a new smartphone called “pixel” and a series of new consumer electronics products for the home, making their mark in the gadget hardware business.
The company will challenge Apple’s iPhone at the high end of the $400 billion global smartphone market.
With its new products, including the $649 Pixel, a smart speaker for the living room dubbed "Home," a virtual reality headset, and a new Wi-Fi router Google is showing its willingness to compete head-to-head with Apple, Amazon.com and even manufacturers of phones using its own Android mobile operating system.
The Company’s executives said they were striving for tighter integration of hardware and software.
"The thinking is that if we can work on hardware and software together, we can innovate much better," Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in an interview with Reuters, citing a recent reorganization that united once-disparate hardware teams.
Under the new structure, the company has begun to take a much more integrated approach to things like supply chain management and design, added Mario Queiroz, a vice president of product management. "The learnings from one product are benefiting another product," he said.
Taking another page from the Apple playbook, Google said it would work exclusively with a single carrier in the United States, Verizon Communications Inc, on the Pixel, emulating Apple's agreement to launch the original iPhone with AT&T Inc. That deal gave Apple unprecedented control over the look of the phone and how it worked.
Shares of Alphabet closed up 0.3 percent, while Verizon fell 1.2 percent.
The phone comes in two sizes, and its high-end camera is one of few distinguishing features, analysts said. The phones come in black, blue and silver and will be able to get up to a seven-hour charge in 15 minutes. Pre-orders begin on Tuesday.
"Aside from the camera, the new Google Pixels are pretty undifferentiated compared to Samsung and iPhone seventh generation phones," industry analyst Patrick Moorhead said.
While the new phones are clearly aimed at competing with the iPhone - Google executives took several swipes at Apple in their on-stage remarks - analysts said Android rivals like Samsung Electronics could be the biggest victim if the Pixel takes off.
