Google debuts new Pixel, latest try in smartphone fight

Google launched caller Pixel 6 smartphones connected Tuesday, its latest effort successful a marketplace the tech elephantine has failed frankincense acold to conquer.

The handset assemblage is dominated by Apple and South Korean electronics colossus Samsung, but Google keeps aiming for a breakthrough with its Android-powered Pixel line.

"Pixel is the champion introduction constituent into Google's adjuvant offerings and services," the phone's merchandise absorption manager Peter Prunuske told a media briefing.

"So we're trying to enactment crossed Google to marque definite that everything works flawlessly connected Pixel," helium added.

Pixel phones person been seen arsenic a mode for Google to showcase the capabilities of its escaped Android mobile operating system, but its stock of the planetary smartphone marketplace has been meager.

Analyst Brad Akyuz explained "Pixel's mediocre penetration performance" by citing tech glitches and US mobile work providers subsidizing different brands successful offers to customers.

"The 1 country wherever the Pixel has excelled astatine is software, but it has not been capable to differentiate much," helium added.

The caller handsets instrumentality a leafage from Apple's playbook with blase hardware and a customized spot that pat into the net giant's different offerings.

Samsung uses Google-backed Android bundle to powerfulness phones, pricing galore handsets wrong scope of radical connected thin budgets.

Apple has consistently aimed iPhones astatine the high-end of the market, controlling the hardware and bundle truthful tightly it has raised antitrust concerns.

Pixel 6 models, with superfast 5G wireless capability, debut Google's ain Tensor spot crafted on the lines of processors it made for information centers to alteration computers to deliberation much similar radical do.

Significant growth

"It's fundamentally a mobile strategy connected a spot designed astir artificial intelligence," Google devices elder vice president Rick Osterloh said during a briefing astatine the company's office successful Silicon Valley.

The Pixel 6 hardware and bundle premix ramps up the smartphone's quality to recognize what radical accidental successful different measurement toward a aboriginal of "ambient computing," according to Osterloh.

The operation refers to being capable to entree the net oregon computing powerfulness conversationally astatine immoderate clip arsenic portrayed successful the 2013 subject fabrication romance movie "Her."

An array of sensors for photography are successful a set connected the backmost of the smartphone, with the Pixel 6 having a 6.4 inch, edge-to-edge surface and the Pro exemplary being somewhat larger.

"We've really had important maturation implicit the past 5 years oregon so," Prunuske said of Google's Pixel business.

Pixel 6 pricing starts astatine $599 USD, portion the Pixel 6 Pro starts astatine $899. Google is taking orders for the smartphones, which volition beryllium disposable opening Oct. 28 .

Global smartphone shipments wide fell six percent successful the 3rd 4th of this twelvemonth arsenic handset makers struggled to conscionable request owed to shortages of components, according to marketplace tracker Canalys.

"The chipset famine has genuinely arrived," said Canalys main analyst, Ben Stanton, adding handset makers person "reluctantly" been pushing up prices.

Samsung was the apical smartphone vendor with 23 percent of the market, portion Apple was 2nd with 15 percent and Chinese steadfast Xiaomi connected its heels with 14 percent, Canalys reported.

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© 2021 AFP