Google Touts Android Progress Beyond Phones, Teases XR Platform

Android began life as a smartphone operating system, but Google took some time during its I/O developer conference today to brag a little about how that platform has fared beyond phones. 

Tablets—historically a weak spot for Android relative to Apple’s iPadOS—lead the list. In a post from Sameer Samat, VP of Android Ecosystem, Google said it’s optimized more than 50 of its own apps for larger screens—”including Gmail, Photos and Meet”—and name-checked Spotify, Minecraft, and Disney+ for their own work adapting their apps for Android tablets.

Google’s work to adopt Android for tablets has paved the way for foldable big-screen phones like the upcoming Pixel Fold. Android’s “smooth transitions across screens, improved multi-column layouts and tabletop mode” make effective use of the extra screen real estate, Samat notes.

He also writes that Wear OS, Google’s smartwatch spinoff of Android, “has grown over five times” since Google rebooted that platform with help from Samsung in 2021 and now ranks as “the fastest-growing smartwatch platform in the world.” Apple, however, maintains a sizable lead, with Counterpoint Research reporting(Opens in a new window) that Apple accounted for 30% of global smartwatch shipments in 2022, followed by Samsung at 10.1%.

Samat further touts Android TV as the world’s top streaming-video platform by shipments but did not note new Android TV features beyond the 800-plus free TV channels added in April. 

Moving from the living room to the garage, Samat says Android Auto, Google’s software to mirror core Android apps on a car’s touch screen, is backed by “nearly every major manufacturer” and “will be available in 200 million cars this year.” But with Tesla ignoring both Android Auto or Apple’s CarPlay and GM announcing that its future battery-electric vehicles will drop both Google and Apple’s phone-mirroring systems, the words “nearly every” do a phenomenal amount of work.

Samat’s post includes a vague but intriguing hint about Google’s ambitions to get into the extended reality market—already occupied by such firms as Meta, HTC and Microsoft, with Apple reportedly due to jump in any month now. “Together with Samsung, we’re building a new immersive XR platform powered by Android,” he writes. “We’ll share more later this year.”