Google has launched the Pixel 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL and 11 Pro Fold with Gemini Intelligence acting across apps rather than sitting in a chatbot. It arrives weeks before Apple ships a Siri rebuilt on Google’s own models, and devices chief Rick Osterloh confirmed the memory shortage will push Pixel prices up.
Google has launched the Pixel 11 line with Gemini at the centre of it, weeks before Apple ships a rebuilt Siri running on Google’s own models. The range covers the Pixel 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL and 11 Pro Fold. The pitch is software rather than hardware.
Gemini Intelligence is meant to read what a user is doing and connect messages, calendar, maps and other Google services, then suggest or carry out the next step, checking availability or starting a restaurant booking. Google is pushing those features into the operating system rather than a separate chatbot app.
Which puts the company in an odd position. It is now selling directly against one of its largest AI customers, since Apple is rebuilding Siri on Gemini and chasing much the same goals, understanding personal context, reading what is on screen and acting across apps.
Rick Osterloh, Google’s devices chief, told CNBC the two will not end up in the same place. “I think obviously Pixel and iPhone are going in very different directions,” he said, pointing to scam detection, Rambler voice transcription and Gemini’s depth in Android as things “unique to Android and Gemini Intelligence.”
He went further on where all this leads. “For the last 10 to 15 years, not a lot has changed in how you use laptops and mobile phones,” Osterloh said, describing Gemini Intelligence as “a totally new way to interact with a computer” that could “perhaps someday become the primary way that people use their phones, their laptops and other devices.”
Whether it sells phones is another matter. Counterpoint Research puts AI around sixth or seventh among reasons people upgrade, up one or two places as Gemini and Apple Intelligence have improved. Research director Tarun Pathak said awareness and concrete use cases will decide whether that interest converts.
Pathak also expects Apple Intelligence to drive upgrades, because Apple already has more generative AI-capable phones in people’s hands than any other brand. Google gets to show the model first. Apple gets to deploy it at scale.
The launch also lands with costs moving the wrong way. Osterloh said there is “quite clearly a shortage of memory, both RAM memory and flash memory,” and that “everyone’s needing to raise their prices,” Google included. It confirms what the company flagged in July, when RAM had gone from $2.80 a gigabyte to $12.
The squeeze reaches well past phones. AI data centres are absorbing the supply, which has already killed the cheap smartphone and finished off the $599 Mac Mini.
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