If Google want to beat Apple in the mobile device game, they need to keep building an ecosystem of Google Mobile Apps and Services that also work on iOS.
Google Apps & Services
If you have an iOS device, how many Google mobile apps or services do you use? Here is a list of what I frequently use on my iPhone:
Google Mobile Apps:
– google photos app
– google maps app
– google drive app
– youtube app
Behind-the-scenes Google Services:
– gmail service
– google calendar service
– google contacts service
(I am counting these services separately because I don’t use the corresponding Google app. I use the services through the Apple apps.)
On top of this I have a bunch of other Google mobile apps installed that I rarely use such as gmail, google search, google plus, google earth, google chrome, google play music, google translate, google play books, google docs, google slides, google street view, and google hangouts.
That’s 16 apps and 3 services. A hefty list!
How many Apple apps do I have installed? At a quick count I have 35 Apple apps of which I use 18 reasonably often. I’m not going to try to count Apple services.
Of the seven google apps and services that I frequently use, six of them (photos, maps, drive, gmail, calendar, contacts) are direct competitors to Apple products (photos, maps, iCloud drive, mail, calendar, contacts). Of the rarely-used google apps, about 7 are direct competitors to an Apple product. That makes 13 apps or services that compete with Apple. I’m sure there are many people out there who use even more Google apps and services than I do.
So What?
What this means is that Google has made significant inroads into my usage of the Apple iPhone. The more Google can get me using their apps and services, the less tied-in I am to the Apple ecosystem.
Take Apple Photos as an example, I do not want to pay for an iCloud subscription, so I only use the free services. This means that I don’t store my 250GB image library on iCloud. Why would I pay $15(AU) per month? Google gives me a service for storing unlimited photos, for free (yes I know it doesn’t suit everyone, but the limitations are fine for me and my iPhone 5).
This means that if I decide to ditch the iPhone and use an Android phone, I just install Google Photos and instantly have access to all my photos. If Apple had delivered a photo storage service at a price-point that competed with Google Photos (i.e. free) then I would never have started to use Google Photos.
Following this example, the opportunity for Google is to keep building apps and services that beat Apple in price point and are available on iOS, providing a smooth and tempting transition for switching to Android.
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