With its Pixel Watch and tablet, Google is getting serious about its own ecosystem

Of these, the most exciting was the news that Google plans to return to the Android tablet market next year and that it’s also releasing its first smartwatch — the Pixel Watch — later in 2022. “Phone is certainly super important, but it’s also becoming very clear that there are other device form factors which are complementary and also critical to a consumer deciding which ecosystem to buy into, and which ecosystem to live [in].”In other words, building a Pixel tablet (and a Pixel Watch) isn’t just important because Google wants customers to buy these specific devices. Pixel phones themselves aren’t going to stop being important, but Google wants people to know that, once they’ve bought a Google smartphone, there’s an array of accessories like smartwatches, earbuds, and tablets that are designed to pair perfectly with it. But despite using Google’s operating systems, Samsung’s devices have always nudged their users toward Samsung’s own ecosystem.Take last year’s Galaxy Watch 4, which saw Samsung finally use Wear OS on one of its smartwatches rather than its own Tizen operating system.