Third-party Android Wear watches

[AndroDict]

Android is open source, available for everyone to use in their own phones.
There are hundreds of smaller Android phone/tablet manufacturers.

However, Android Wear is basically Android and it has been around for over a year now. Still there's no smaller manufacturers making Android Wear-smartwatches (at least on AliExpress).

Why is this?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[mr_nobody]

Lack of market interest.

[edit]: The other side is google exerts more control over android wear than over aosp. So it may not be possible for lower tier manufacturers to "just use" android wear the way they can with aosp.

 

[Penguwin]

My take is that there are certain system requirements for Android Wear and those system requirements / components may cost more than the low tier manufacturers want to spend.

Also, If you try to push it and cheap out on the components, you are probably left with a less than desirable experience.

Just my .02....

 

[nostrademons]

I've wondered about this too, given that the smartwatch category was started by Pebble, which was a tiny startup at the time. So it's unlikely that small independent vendors can't build one, though it's probably very difficult. There've also been non-Android-Wear smartwatch startups that have come out recently: Vector, Olio, Blocks, etc.

Maybe it's that smaller smartwatch manufacturers are afraid of Google's market power and don't want to be commoditized out of the market the way many Android phone manufacturers were? Also, the app ecosystem for Android Wear is still quite small, so it's less of a benefit for watch makers than for phone makers.