By Julia Love SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google on Tuesday announced a new "Pixel" smartphone and a virtual reality headset, the company's latest effort to sell consumers on Google-branded devices and to challenge Apple Inc's iPhone at the high end of the more than $400 billion global market. The new phone starts at a price of $649, and Google is working with exclusively with Verizon Communications in the United States, Google executives said at a launch event in San Francisco. The string of announcements, including a new Wifi router and its voice activated digital assistant for the living room, "Home," is the clearest sign yet that Google intends to compete directly with Apple, Amazon.com and even its own Android mobile operating system customers to create a system of devices and hardware that meet every digital need.



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