Google Catalogs is now available for Android tablets
For many of us, the arrival of piles of catalogs marks the start of the holiday shopping season. But what if you could have all your favorite catalogs in one place, with the latest issues always available at your fingertips?
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Catalogs landing on Android tablets is the latest step in a shopping line Google has been assembling since it put Google Shopper into Android Market in February 2010 and extended it to the iPhone in early 2011. The company had already been moving its services onto slate hardware since its April 2010 push to bring Google services to the iPad and other tablets, so a tablet-first catalog reader fits an established pattern rather than opening a new front.
The timing matters on two axes. It lands at the start of the holiday season, when print catalogs traditionally peak, and it arrives amid Android's strongest stretch of momentum: Gartner put Android above 50 percent of Q3 2011 smartphone sales, comScore measured 40 percent U.S. subscriber share by August, and a rumored figure had Android on roughly one in four tablets sold the prior quarter. Digital catalog browsing also runs parallel to what MediaMemo called a "Hulu For Magazines" Android newsstand in May — publishers testing whether glossy print formats survive as tablet apps.
First-order effects
- Retailers and catalog publishers gain a free Android-tablet distribution channel just as holiday shopping begins, reaching a device base that Gartner says now outsells every rival OS in smartphones.
- Google extends its commerce footprint beyond search results into branded browsing, complementing Shopper's barcode-and-scan utility with a lean-back discovery surface.
Second-order effects
- Catalog publishers weighing tablet apps must now choose between building standalone products and feeding Google's aggregator, echoing the choice magazine publishers faced with the Android newsstand earlier in 2011.
- Apple's iPad-centric publishing partners face pressure to match Android reach, since brands seeking "prime-time-like" constant access to audiences — as mobile apps were positioned in September coverage — can no longer treat iOS as the only tablet channel.
Third-order effects
- If catalog browsing migrates from paper to platform aggregators, the printed holiday catalog gives way to app-distributed merchandising, shifting the economics of direct-mail retail toward whoever controls the tablet storefront.
- Google's cross-platform habit — Shopper on iPhone, Catalogs on Android — suggests its commerce strategy treats operating systems as interchangeable surfaces, with data and ad relationships rather than device ownership as the moat.
The trend: As Android's installed base swells through late 2011, Google is layering shopping and media-reading experiences onto tablets, converting print-era retail formats into platform-distributed apps.