Two key things we learned during a Motorola press event in Chicago this week: 1) The company’s bullish on modular phones and 2) Not so much with smartwatches.
The Lenovo-owned smartphone maker’s head of global product development Shakil Barkat told the audience that, “We don’t see enough pull from the market at this point to put out a new product,” when speaking of the Moto 360. Barkat cited a lack of broad appeal for the space.
Which, let’s be honest, doesn’t say a lot about the health of Google’s Android Wear operating system. The Moto 360 was easily one of the best pieces of hardware to adopt the smartwatch OS, keeping with it for two generations of devices, even as companies like Samsung abandoned ship for their own proprietary software.
Those offerings make a strong case for developing a software solution custom-made for a device — especially in light of the number of potential variables present on a wearable. And the recently announced delay of Wear 2.0 certainly hasn’t helped its case. The OS, which was due out this fall, was pushed to early next year back in September.
The executive suggested that there may be a new smartwatch in Motorola’s future somewhere down the road, saying that the “wrist still has value,” but the short-term prognosis is pretty grim.