Why did Google release it now? – To be a rival to Apple’s Iphone 7?

This seems like a big business strategy to release the Pixel just after a month Apple has released Iphone 7 but google says this is planned a year back. Google says that they have kept a lot or research to develop this mobile and there isn’t any plan for this act to disturb the Apple Iphone’s market as they believe the best will always survive. As the Iphone 7 pre-order sales are just opened in India, Singapore and other Asian countries many trade analysts were proclaiming that Pixel is going to show a lot of impact on the Iphone 7 bookings. Google has also showed its importance towards India by opening a pre booking after the countries US, UK, Australia and Germany. Surprisingly there isn’t China and Taiwan in the list as of now this itself projects the importance of Indian market to google.