You may have heard that Google paid a whooping £2.1bn last year to buy Tony Fadell's start-up Nest, a widely applauded internet-connected thermostat and smoke detector. [Get one here]
But more importantly than the Nest technology, Google got Tony Fadell himself in the transaction—the man dubbed the "the iPod's father". Tony was the design engineer who sold Steve Jobs on his vision of a portable music player, and then worked alongside Jony Ive to build it, update it and then do it all over again with the iPhone.
Now more than a decade later, the two men are set to go head-to-head with wearable tech as the Apple vs Google war heats up.
Tony Fadell agreed to sell Nest to Google because he believed it would help accelerate his thoughtful home master plan. By thoughtful home he means a smart home, one with devices, appliances and integrated technology that work around to your living patterns, by recording behaviours and adjusting themselves accordingly. This is essentially the Internet of Things, but Tony doesn’t like the term and has said it does a "disservice" to his products.
But interestingly enough, Tony Fadell isn’t hard at work at the moment on creating more devices for his thoughtful home vision. Instead he has decided to tackle what could be seen as a bigger fish—Google glass and the task of getting wearable computing to the masses. With Larry Page’s blessing he has taken control over the Glass project from the Google X skunk works team—just as Apple launched its first real, consumer ready piece of wearable computing: the Apple Watch.
"I remember what it was like when we did the iPod and the iPhone. I think this can be that important, but it's going to take time to get it right,” he says in an interview to the BBC (below).
Needless to say Tony and his Google team have some catching up to do, and may be dealing with an uphill battle in trying to convince consumers Google Glass has merit. The £965 Explorer Edition of Glass was pulled from sale in January of this year, and since, Mr Fadell made clear that future test versions would be kept in-house as to not spoil the market with a product that simply isn’t ready for consumer trials.
Meanwhile Apple cracks on with its own development of wearable technology, knowing that while there is an expectation that Tony Fadell will deliver a portfolio of truly disruptive services with mass appeal, he hasn’t to date—and Jonathan Ive has.
"Google still lacks a smash-hit consumer electronics device of its own - it would be sensible to assume it hopes Mr Fadell can deliver that missing element," says Ben Wood, from the tech consultancy CCS Insight.
Much of the problem Google and Tony Fadell face is trying to break into the hardware space, as a company that is, at its heart, a software giant. Creating actual devices that are beautiful, functional and cutting-edge is no easy feat. As a hosted VoIP business phone system provider—we can relate. Every day we work with devices (phones) and software (the VoIP platform they run on) trying to ensure break-through improvements are made, consumers benefit and boundaries are pushed with business phone features that really help small businesses. Luckily we aren’t designing phones from scratch given our partnership with Mitel, but nonetheless the battle of having to conquer both hardware and software is one we can appreciate. Most mechanical / network engineers are not software coders, and vice versa, making the challenge of collaboration huge. Like Tony Fadell though, it is a challenge we can't imagine not tackling.
To learn more about our hosted VoIP business phone system, Mitel phones or the winning in the hardware-meets-software space, give us a call on 0207 078 3200 today.