Sure, on the hardware side, which isn’t their core competency. Remember, Apple’s core competency had always been mutually inclusive hardware + software combination, where Google’s has been software.

Let’s not forget, Google wallet had working NFC mobile payments years before Apple did…it was just that Apple made the push to get all the banks to cooperate and help make Apple Pay ubiquitous.

Google apparently loves to dabble, experiment, put things out there and let them die off. Which is fine if you’re just testing the waters for a market. I wouldn’t say that puts them behind, as a whole. It just means they’ll never be a leader in hardware unless they change their core competency.

I don’t see much point in them entering hardware markets which were already dominated by multiple players; there are plenty of non-Apple hardware products for Android users as-is. There must be money in it?