Miles Barr, Google’s director of engineering for Wear OS, said Friday during an interview that Google has no plans to release a smartwatch this year. “To think of a one-size-fits-all watch, I don’t think we’re there yet,” Barr said. “Our focus is on our partners for now.” After the interview, Google confirmed that it will not release a smartwatch this year.
It was expected that it would be announced alongside the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL. The idea was that the Pixel watch would be used to showcase the best of the company’s WearOS software, similar to the way existing Pixel phones show off the best features of Android. Google currently relies on hardware makers like Fossil, Michael Kors, and Tag Heuer to make the physical watches.
The company says, for now, it will continue building software for wearables rather than building hardware. In this edition of Wear OS, Google has showered a lot of attention for its voice-controlled assistant, Google Assistant. For now, we’re willing to give the new operating system a fair chance, but it sure wouldn’t have hurt to throw in a new watch style to get everyone excited. Maybe next year.
