The iPhone gets its share of Samsung smartphones running Google’s Android software. At the same time, US antitrust regulators are reviewing Google’s agreement with Apple over its initial search engine (Google may lose its privileged position in the iPhone’s Safari browser).
These two threats to Google’s mobile advertising business have made the tech giant take a big gamble. According to an internal document seen by The Information, the company is doubling its investments in its own hardware, including Pixel phones, including product and software development staff working on features on non-Google hardware.
The document shows that Google has no plans to cut support for Samsung, but believes that the once-dominant Android smartphone maker is struggling to compete with Apple and believes that the best way to protect the platform is more hardware made by Google.
This strategy can be risky given that Pixel hardware has barely reached the market so far. The report states that sales of Pixel phones last year were only 4.5 million units compared to 230 million iPhones.
Google declined to comment on the article.
Source: Ferra
