Android Wear is Google’s Windows Phone Moment (Premium)

Google controls the dominant personal computing platform. So why isn’t Android Wear even remotely successful?

That’s a great question, and it’s an interesting problem for Google. And comes with obvious parallels to Windows phone and Microsoft’s many other failed attempts at leveraging its own dominant platform.

First, some data.

Smartwatch marketshare and usage share numbers are a bit harder to come by than those for PCs, tablets, or smartphones. But what I was able to find is that smartwatch sales have seen explosive growth year-over-year. The Apple Watch dominates this market. And Gartner says that they will continue to do so through at least 2021.

Apple’s dominance of the smartwatch market, at least from a unit sales perspective, is not assured: It’s possible that smartwatches will follow the same trajectory as other personal computing markets of the past—PCs and phones—with lower-cost and more open offerings finally pulling ahead of Apple’s more expensive and closed solutions. Or it’s as possible that it will track like the tablet market, where Apple has maintained its lead and seen its dominance fade much more slowly.

It says something, perhaps, that the world’s largest smartphone maker and biggest overall Android licensee, Samsung, doesn’t even use Android Wear: It switched to Tizen for its own smartwatches. The question is what this says: As we’ve discussed in the past, Samsung has been trying to remove Google from its ecosystem as much as possible, and doing so in smartwatches may have just been an easy target.

But it’s not just Samsung. If you look at the available smartwatches on the Android Wear website, you’ll see something interesting. Yes, a handful of Android handset makers—like Huawei, LG, and Motorola—are represented. But most of the models there are from traditional watchmakers like Casio, Fossil, and Tag Heuer, fitness brands like New Balance, or broader lifestyle brands like Guess, Kate Spade, and Tommy Hilfiger. The smartwatch market is not evolving like the smartphone market at all.

And that, of course, was the same problem that Microsoft faced back when Windows ruled the personal computing world. Its subsequent attempts to leverage the Windows brand and enter other markets all failed. Not just with Windows phone, though that is a high profile and recent example. Windows Media, Windows Media Center, and Windows Home Server, and many others fall into this same bucket. (One wonders how Microsoft Band escaped this branding mistake. Maybe not.)

Some may argue that some of these products didn’t fail because of the Windows branding. But I think the brand actually played a role in each case. Deserved or not, Windows hasn’t been a great brand from a positive connotation perspective for quite some time. Many simply associate it with the drudgery of work at best or with instability and malware at worse.

But it’s not just the brand. The parallels between Android Wear and Windows phone are a bit deeper than that.

If you recall my original excitement about Windows phone when Microsoft first announced this system to the world back in February 2010, it wasn’t because Microsoft was making it or because it was yet another Windows product. No, my excitement was pure: I was excited about Windows phone because it didn’t copy the competition but instead offered a fresh approach to what a smartphone could be. Windows phone wasn’t just different, it was innovative. It was better. (Well, that was the plan. History and the owners of the apps and services that would run on these devices had other plans, negating Windows phone’s advantages.)

Today, Android Wear as a platform is to the Apple Watch as Windows phone was to iPhone/Android several years ago: Not just different, but better. The user interface is logical, unlike Apple’s. It’s easily learned because it leverages your smartphone navigation skills. Yes, Apple has fixed some of its nonsense Apple Watch user experiences in the most recent releases. But the gap remains. Android Wear is in some ways “better.” But Apple Watch still dominates.

Of course, it’s not all about the underlying platform either. A platform maker’s related apps and services come to bear as well.

When it launched Windows phone, Microsoft did what it could to leverage its popular products and services. So Windows phone included a decent Microsoft Office experience, because that was a such a key asset. Today, you might think that Office on a phone isn’t much of a selling point, but remember that Office was bigger than Windows, financially and in usage. You go to war with the army you have.

Today, Google is likewise leveraging its popular products and services in Android Wear. And one can make a great argument that its mobile-focused services—Google Maps, Photos, Search, and so on—make tons of sense. That what Google can do here is better than what Microsoft might have done with Windows phone.

But these situations are closer to each other than may be immediately apparent. Google, like Microsoft before it, does have strong brands it can bring to bear in this new market. But this new market is still completely different from the dominant platform in question. Slapping the same brand on there won’t necessarily seal the deal. Being better than the market leader might not either. And leveraging products and services that may or may not matter in this new market? Kind of a non-event.

The smartphone market, ultimately, bears little resemblance to the PC market, and the one thing that Microsoft could really leverage from the PC—Office—just hasn’t amounted to much. Few people would ever edit documents on a phone. Of those that do, I suspect few people are excited about it. After all, it’s still work.

As for the smartwatch market, simply providing yet another way to do phone stuff, but now on your wrist, hasn’t proven particularly compelling. Smartwatches make for decent “front ends” to the smartphone, for things like notifications. And there are activities that make more sense on a watch than on a phone, like fitness tracking. But for the most part, the primary point of a smartwatch has little do with what’s happening on a smartphone.

And that’s why Android Wear is failing, ultimately. The smartwatch market is just too different.

Think about it. When Apple talks about Apple Watch compete, it doesn’t mention Android Wear or Tizen. It talks about traditional watchmakers. Apple understands that that is what it is competing with. And Apple, unique among tech companies, is perfectly situated to compete in a market that prefers form over function. Where looking good is more important than working well.

Today’s smartwatch market is really about style and fashion. No wonder Apple is doing so well. And no wonder why geeky, analytic Google is struggling.

This week, we are seeing rumors that Google will try to counter its smartwatch failures by rebranding Android Wear to Wear OS. This follows a similar move to brand Android Pay to Google Pay. And the theory here is that this all makes sense because these things are not specific to Android. After all, you could use Android Wear device in tandem with an iPhone. Sightings of such things are less common than those of Sasquatch, yes, but you get the idea.

None of this matters. Google can rename Android Wear all it wants. It will never have the cachet or luxury appeal of Apple, and that’s true no matter whom it partners with. Yes, I do expect Android Wear—or Wear OS, or whatever—to make some inroads on Apple Watch over time. But it will be slow going, a slog. This isn’t going to be the smartphone market all over again.