Today is all about delays. On top of Star Trek: Bridge Crew being delayed until 2017 for PlayStation VR, another, more major delay is taking place. According to Google, Android Wear 2.0, the OS responsible for all wearables from the Android camp has been delayed till next year. Originally set to arrive sometime this fall, Google has only given a vague early 2017 release date for when we can now expect the OS to arrive.
Dan Seifert writes for The Verge:
Google says that the delay for the launch of Android Wear 2.0 is so that the company can hit the quality requirements it has for the platform when it is publicly launched and not because of specific hardware delays. Though major Android Wear partners such as Motorola, Huawei, and LG have said they won’t be launching any more Wear smartwatches this year, Google points to recent devices from Asus, Fossil, Michael Kors, Polar, and Nixon as evidence of the vibrancy of the platform. Google says that all of the devices launching this fall will support Android Wear 2.0 when the final version is available next year.
In July, I’d written an extensive piece on why we shouldn’t expect another Sony SmartWatch with Android Wear and the likelihood of the entire platform being dead. With this delay, the fate of the entire platform gets a further shade of gray on it as a majority of the original Android Wear partners have no plans to release a new watch this year and perhaps well into next, if ever. With no new exciting hardware from the Android camp for the holiday season, the entire ‘smartwatch’ category (which will eventually just be called the watch category as far as I’m concerned) is left wide open to Apple who just released the Watch Series 1 & Series 2, and Samsung, who has been building their wearables based on their Tizen OS.
For Samsung, the holiday quarter might prove to be a bit more difficult to navigate due to the whole Note 7 debacle which could make consumers rethink purchasing one of their products. But even then, Samsung will still likely do better than a majority of Android Wear partners combined, let alone Apple who is sure to do some huge numbers.
What’s striking to me is how much hardware partners are willing to put up with Google driven projects that lead to nowhere. It was only a few years ago that Sony and Logitech, among others, released TVs and setup boxes that were built upon Google TV, only for the software giant to eventually abandon the OS. For Google, the cost was relatively low, just R&D. For hardware partners, not only did they have to integrate the OS, but they had to build new hardware, ship them, and eventually eat the cost of not selling them.
Now I realize the promise Google is setting forth – incorporate our OS and it will set you apart and in turn, get you more hardware sales – but when everybody has access to the same exact software, differentiating products can become harder and harder with hardware. On top of that, the gains Google gets here are always significantly more than hardware manufacturers, which get a one time sale from the consumer who might not need a new device for years to come. On the other hand, Google now owns that person and more importantly, all of their data, which they can mine during that entire time.
As for Android Wear and Android TV, OEMs have no ability to tweak the software in a meaningful way, but with Android on phones, they could at least add on top of the system – though even that’s slowly going away. In the case of Sony, I think it was wise for them to get out while they did. I’m not sure about the viability of the platform in the long term, so why continue to dump money into a segment that’s clearly not performing all that well? Heck, though they might lack the features that are packed into Android Wear, I think what Sony is doing with smartwatches on their own is actually far more interesting.
Discuss:
Do you think the future of Android Wear is in flux?