The
prescription version of the first google glass was produced in year 2012 with
estimated price of US1500 - the breakthrough about wearable technology, it
really hit the eyeballs from people all over the world! However, the launch of
google glass has been the subject of much controversy on its infringement of
personal privacy, betrayal of secrets, tool as committing a crime, high
production cost, product safety and so on.
The most suspicious view from the public is whether there is a must to hang the mobile phone on the tiny screen on the right hand side of your glass? Thomke and Reinertsen (2012) mentioned that R&D teams easily fall into fallacy “the more features we put into a product, the more customers will like it” and the case of Google glass may indicate that team is tempted to show off by producing brilliant technical solution that amaze their peers and management, however, not directly address the public need.
Google Glass sucks
Holistic Analysis on Business Environment for Google
Supplier Bargaining Power: Weak
Since Google continues leading role in the internet search engine in the world, and suppliers are different from different sectors, so the supplier’s bargaining power is weak. However, there would be potential threat of forward integration of various suppliers which would raise the bargaining power of suppliers existing in the market.
Buyer Bargaining Power: Strong
Buyers classified as the people/organizations that are using Google various services since its existence till now. There are numerous other search engines and companies that compete with Google in the many fields that Google has developed. The means of Google’s revenue are advertising and Google phones which lead Google to affect profit as well as the Google’s bottom line. Therefore, the more competitive in these markets and the stronger bargaining power of buyers.
Threat of New Entrants: moderate
No perfect search engine exists till yet, tally to little IP involved, little regulation, low fixed and switching cost in this growing market, thus, a new entrant will enter the market at any time and will wipe the previous search engines like Google did.
Threat of substitutes: weak
Google is the best and the most popular Search Engine available in the World Wide Web, yet, there are several substitutes e.g. Bing, Yahoo, Ask, AOL search, WOW, MyWebSearch for Google. Luckily, Google has numerous other services available e.g. smartphones, Google adwords, Google Adsense, Google Drive, Google Plus and plenty of others. Users do like to use this tool as it’s the most convenient tool and this could be the reason why no one wants to change their Search Engine.
Industry Rivalry: Moderate
Rules/ethic have not been defined so the environment is easily exploited or manipulated which would be negative for Google. Large industries allow different firms to prosper without having to shrink market share from each other, therefore, large industry size is a positive for Google. When exit barriers are low, weak firms are more likely to leave the market, which would enhance the profits for the remaining firms, hence, low exit barriers are a positive for Google.
The most powerful search engine - Google search?
With the mission of organizing the world’s information and making it globally accessible and useful, Google provides the platform for people to manage their data everywhere. Not mentioned their world biggest and most-used search engine that handle over ten thousand billion requests everyday. The Google search interface with more than 130 languages which eliminate the languages barriers for people to access the information worldwide. Also, the translation tools provided further enhancement in the accessibility.
Google breaks the world border in virtual fashion
Align with the increasing needs from globalization, people request for information access anywhere and anytime with any devices. Being one of the technology innovative leader, Google dedicates their efforts in developing the mobile service so that people can manage their tasks with their phones all over the world, such as checking emails from Gmail, watching video from YouTube, access any location and plan the route with Google map and even get any stored data from Google drive. Google enhanced the user experience and increased the data mobility along with their technology innovations and deliver such handiness experience to their users.
Awesome innovation - Google Glass
Google glass was originally designed for offering the ubiquitous computer and giving an ultimate experience for the world. The glass was innovated to display information in hand-free smartphone format which can function for photo and video taking, phone calling, messages writing and even for Google map searching etc. The purpose of the glass is to free your hand from holding a phone so that you can keep enjoying the things you are doing, such as you can keep playing golf while the glass can help you to take photos by just commanding it.
Why Google Glass?
Sergey Brin is giving a heads-up to the world by telling why himself and his team at google want to build an eye-mounted camera/computer, codenamed glass, and he wants to call for a new way of seeing the relationship with mobile computers in the video.
Ongoing innovation journey
From the innovative perspectives, Google is definitely the global early adopter for engaging the innovative technology in developing the Google glass. Though they are pausing their further action in both developing and selling the glass, still, they have never stop their innovation journey and certainly will present the upgraded version of the glass in the near future.
Google to Conquer!
As analyzed above, buyers’ bargaining power is extremely strong in the high-tech industry accompanying by the moderate threat of new entrants and industry rivalry. In order to prosper in such a highly competitive market, it is essential for individual industry member to identify their key success factors, i.e. specific product attributes, competitive capabilities, specific intangible assets and necessary resources and competencies, to craft their business strategies and position their companies accordingly.
The Ultimate Weapon… The Unreachable Goal!
Analyst attributes the success of Google to the leadership of its management, its commitment to innovation, adequate development strategies and successful marketing plans (Buck, 2011). Since business plans and marketing strategies can be easily imitated by its competitors, technological innovation is the key to success in the highly-competitive high-tech industry where Google differentiate itself with one of its philosophy – “Great just isn’t good enough”. Google sets unreachable goal for its employees so as to encourage imagination and innovation. As competition in the high-tech industry is cutthroat, company will be eliminated easily if they do not put efforts in technological innovation.
What’s Hot?
Big data management has become a hot topic recently as analysts believe that successful management and analysis of the data collected can bring business opportunities and success. As a leading player of the high-tech industry, Google prides itself for being market-oriented and forecasting the market needs accurately – “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” is the mission of Google.We Lead or We Are Led?
Technology advancement impacts our daily lives in all aspects – the smartphones we use, the electric cars we drive and the cloud storage technology we use today are changing the way we live.
“Focus on the user and all else will follow” is the number one philosophy of Google. Technology impacts the way we live; whilst at the same time, people impacts technology as people determines where the future technology will be going as the ultimate goal of technology development is all about people – to bring people a better life. Other than its core business – search engine, Google has been actively engaging in the development of various tools, such as Google drive, Google document, Google+, Google phone, Google glass and more. All these products are developed according to the needs of people and improved per the comments from users.
Wearable device: next indispensable item!
In 1961, MIT mathematics professor Edward Thorp developed the world 1st wearable computing device From this first step, people keep a moderate pace to create new excitement in area over the decades.
(Online Source:http://mashable.com/2014/05/13/wearable-technology-history/)
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| (Source: www.statista.com) |
An interesting analysis was found, Dawson (2014) stated that "Google is adding value to the smartphone experience through peripheral devices - smartphone-out approach - i.e. extending smartphone functionality out to wearables, and Apple's rumored approach as wearables-in - i.e. using wearable to add functionality to the smartphone.
(Online source: https://techpinions.com/apple-destroyer-of-fragmentation/28899)
In terms of their new product launch strategy, also ran in opposite way. With similar brand reputation and awareness, Apple can always catch the the best time to launch its new product. They might not the trend setter, but it is the best trend catcher and winner! iPhone is one of the good examples. Apple Watch is following the same footprints as the first step for Apple to join this wearable device party. The world is keep watching how Apple shows off their intangible power again. With strong soft and hard capability support, a new innovative device - google glass might become one of the most important breakthrough items developed in google history. However, google glass project SEEMS lead Google to walk through a rough road in this platform.
Creativity or innovation is essential to determine Google’s success. In view of google glass product development concept: people can see, connect and record their daily lives not through your mobile screen or camera screen. Personal moment and your eye is directly connected. People can enjoy the “moment”! The concept and glass feature itself is brilliant but the market response was in opposite way. The forecast of wearable technology is accurate but Google has not put the product to the right marketing track.
This is not my cup of tea!
Originally, google glass were only provided to the people who joined google explorer program, purposed to collect usage opinions for further product adjustment. However, google’s top management: Sergey Brin decided to open this beta version purchase to all US people. A flash of excitement was created in the market because of its innovation and brand reputation. Many people felt disappointed after using it for few weeks or even few days because of the bad user experience. Wrong market strategy included: launch a non-readiness product to the mass market, overestimated market demand (wrong primary target audience was set), big gap between consumer perceived and actual value (high retail price, design, usability) (Merton, 2013). Lack of connectivity of human’s daily lives is the vital misperception seen by Google. No doubt that Google has successfully found out differentiation among its competitors but, it went to the market in the wrong time and wrong way.
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| Google Glass developer are jumping ship. with half of the eyewear's success resting on developers, could Google's vision of the future be destined for an early death? (Photo: Ted Eytan) (Online source: www.techtimes.com) |
End of the story OR can’t live without it?
Many people counted Google glass project is failure. Our team will see it in different ways. Though the Google glass project was officially terminated, we can see that wearable technology development is still on its fast pace. Google has proved its creativity and foresight of wearable technology and computing devices. Differentiation has also been made among industry’s players and such competitive advantage is not easily to be replaced in a short period of time and investment. And, in the other way to see the whole case, it “successfully” obtained massive media exposure around the world. Together with Google’s own brand reputation and they have owned a number of IPs (intelligence property), if top management changes their mentality and handle this product in a more pragmatic approach, it would turn the crisis around to become another opportunity (Sharman, 2015).
How to bring it to the workplace is the key to Google to think of. With existing technology and features, Google may push their focus to develop a niche and professional market such as medical, aviation or even militarily usage...etc. Nevertheless, whoever the target audience is, well planned marketing strategy is a must to create positive user satisfaction. Right product position may even push the product to a high market value. Wide-ranging usability and engagement in workplace and consumers’ daily lives would be the next issue to be solved (Domanico, 2014).
Conclusion
Sucked Google Glass might save your life in one day
Google called a “pause” on the sale of the Google glass in early January of 2015, as Google also realized the ambiguous positioning of the Google glass in the market, instead Google could change the whole R & D procedure and product line from the Google X lab to another department in charged by Tony Fadell who was the inventor of iPod in order to seek for breakthrough on the glass before moving ahead with aggressive strategy, trying to “reset” previous defaulted image of glass of the public, pave better ground for moving on with growth strategies.
"Less is more" and "less but better" work because our brains prefer simple
Solving a problem more efficiently is innovation. The goal of any technology product, whether it would be tangible hardware or intangible software, should be to make something easier as complexity is your enemy.
Google glass might be trapped into fantasy about all the things we think we need to do to build a product but often it's the removal of things that make a product great.
Google Glass should adopt “focused differentiation” strategy
Google glass would adopt focused differentiation
strategy to offer unique features that fulfill the
demands of a narrow market that
Google would develop tremendous expertise about the Google glass and associated services that they
offer which rivals and new entrants may find it difficult to compete with Google
following a focus strategy.
Google glass reform the diagnosis procedure in hospital:
Positive comments on applying Google glass in the Hospital, Google glass would save doctor’s time to get patient’s anamnesis by scanning QR code which can spare doctor’s hands to have urgent surgery for patient instantaneously.
Fire fighter can work faster, safer, smarter with Google glass:
Google glass would provide instant information e.g. floor plan of premise, the location of fire hydrants in the district, roadmap from the fire station to concerned site during urgent situation. Glass would transmit the instant recorded video in the premise to fire control station for investigation and analysis in the computer without wasting time to address accurate information in ample data list.
Idea for Google Glass:
Design you home through Google Glass
However, Google should consider the limited demand available within a niche can cause problems. First, Google could find its growth ambitions stymied. Once its target market is being well served/saturated, expansion to other markets might be the only way to expand, and this often requires developing a new set of skills/features. Also, the niche could disappear or be taken over by other upcoming competitors.
Google should capitalize their competitive advantages and constantly review and monitor their corporate strategic planning in order to keep abrest of with fast changing technological world.
Google should capitalize their competitive advantages and constantly review and monitor their corporate strategic planning in order to keep abrest of with fast changing technological world.
Reference
- Arce, N. (2014, Nov 16). Glass May Die Early Death with Early Adopter Losing Interest. Tech Times. Retrieved from http://www.techtimes.com/articles/20284/20141116/google-glass-may-die-early-death-with-early-adopters-losing-interest.htm
- Buck, E.W. (2011). The 5 Key Success Factors: A Powerful System For Total Business Success [Abstract]. Retrieved from http://totalsuccesscenter.com/business-success/key-success-factors/
- Dawson, J. (2014, Mar 28). Apple: destroyer of fragmentation. Tech pinions. Retrieved from https://techpinions.com/apple-destroyer-of-fragmentation/28899
- Domanico, A. (2014, May 6). We asked early adopter: Why did you buy Google Glass?. TechHive. Retrieved from http://www.techhive.com/article/2151386/whos-buying-google-glass-and-why.html
- Google Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/
- Hinch, W. (2015, Jan 25). Where did it all go wrong for Google Glass? [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.ebuyer.com/blog/2015/01/where-did-it-go-wrong-for-google-glass/
- Knoblauch, M. (2014, May 13). The History of Wearable Tech, From the Casino to the Consumer. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2014/05/13/wearable-technology-history/
- Merton, R. (2013, Apr). Innovation Risk: How to Make Smarter Decisions. Harvard Business Review , 48-56. Harvard Business Publishing.
- Norris, A. (2014, Dec 27). Wearable technology: 2015 is the year of smart bra. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/predictions/technology/11306735/wearable-technology-trend.html
- Paulson, M. (2014, May 30). A Brief History of Wearable. Wearable Tech World. Retrieved from http://www.wearabletechworld.com/topics/wearable-tech/articles/380055-brief-history-wearables.htm
- Reisinger, D. (2014, Apr 16). 10 Reasons It’s a Bad Idea to Be a Google Glass Early Adopter. eWeek. Retrieved from http://www.eweek.com/mobile/slideshows/10-reasons-its-a-bad-idea-to-be-a-google-glass-early-adopter.html
- Sharman, E. (2015, Jan 19). 5 Reasons Why Google Glass’ “Failure” was a “Success”. Inc. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/5-reasons-why-google-s-glass-failure-was-a-success.html
- Thomke, S. and Reinertsen, D. (2012, May). Six Myths of Product Development. Harvard Business Review, 85-94. Harvard Business Publishing
- Wearable device market value from 2010-2018. (2015). Statista [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/259372/wearable-device-market-value/
