Motorola Won’t Release a New Smartwatch for the Launch of Android Wear 2.0

Motorola released their first smartwatch in September of 2014 and then followed it up a year later with the second generation Moto 360. Many were hoping that the company would release something this year, but then in September, we learned Motorola, LG and Huawei didn’t have any plans to release a new Android Wear smartwatch for 2016. Many speculated that these companies were waiting on Android Wear 2.0 before putting out a new wearable.

The first Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview was made available to the public in May, and it seemed like Google was on course to release something this year. DP2 for Android Wear 2.0 was subsequently released two months later and it increased the Platform API to 24 so it could coincide with Android 7.0 Nougat. We even had a third developer preview for Android Wear 2.0 released in September of this year, but this is when we learned about the delay.

We still don’t know exactly when Android Wear 2.0 will be officially released but we are told that the developer preview program will continue into “early 2017.” Once we learned about this, it started to make sense why companies like LG, Huawei and Motorola didn’t have any plans to release a new Android Wear smartwatch in 2016. The platform, and market as a whole, is somewhat struggling right now, but many hoped it would be revitalized with the release of Android Wear 2.0.

This week we heard from Shakil Barkat, who is the head of global product development at Motorola, and they confirmed the company didn’t have any plans to release a new smartwatch with the launch of Android Wear 2.0. We’ll still likely see the rumored Pixel watches released with the new update, but anyone hoping for an updated Moto 360 will have to wait. Motorola says the market simply isn’t “broad enough” to release a new smartwatch year after year.

They are open to revisit the wearable market when technology improves though, but didn’t give a time frame for fans to look forward to.

Source: The Verge

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