Android Wear is now over and rebranded as WearOS by Google. It is a wearables operating system meant for everyone, says Google.
Android Wear, the name is officially dead. As it was reported earlier, Google has rebranded Android Wear, its platform for wearables and smartwatches as Wear OS with entirely new branding and logo. So what has changed with Wear OS? Are there new features and smartwatches coming with Google’s new Wear OS? There’s no news on that front for now.
Yes, Wear OS by Google will continue to work with phones running Android 4.4+ and iOS 9.3 and above, but it looks like Go edition devices will be excluded from support for Wear OS. Go Edition of Android Oreo is a more streamlined version of the operating system and meant for devices with less than 1GB RAM and comes with Go editions of Google’s apps as well.
Coming to Wear OS, Google’s platform for wearables has not seen the kind of success that the Apple Watch and its watchOS have come to enjoy. Still there are quite a few watch brands, which have jumped onto the Android Wear/Wear OS smartwatch platform, which includes names like TAG Heuer, Fossil Q, Guess, Misfit, Casio, etc. Even fashion labels like Kate Spade, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton have options in the Wear OS platform from Google.
But despite a variety of Wear OS watches, Google’s platform for smartwatches is nowhere as popular as Apple and its Watch series. Interestingly Google has also revealed that “in 2017, one out of three new Android Wear watch owners also used an iPhone,” in a blog post, which announced the Wear OS name. However, Android Wear/Wear OS features on iOS are limited, compared to those on Android phones.
In terms of volumes Apple wins the game. The company shipped over 18 million watch shipments for 2017 with 54 per cent growth over 2016 figures, according to research firm Canalys and Apple’s new Watch Series 3 drove most of the growth with a little under 9 million shipments. Whether Wear OS can eventually challenge Apple and its watchOS dominance is something that remains to be seen. We will also have to wait and see if Google announces any new features for Wear OS at its upcoming developer conference I/O which takes place in May 2018.