As rumoured, Google has now rebranded its Android Wear OS as Wear OS by Google. It also comes with a slogan “Make every minute matter”.
Google’s this step matters because Wear OS works with phones running on both Android and iOS. So its branding shouldn’t be specific to any platform. Name change also indicates that Google has considerable amount of iPhone users using Android Wear watches.
When Android Wear was launched initially, it was an Android-based smartwatch OS working with Android phones only. At that time “Android Wear” made perfect sense. Later, it also brought iPhone compatibility that made the original name misleading.
The rebranding also confirmed that Android Wear is not dead. Android Wear 2.0 was released around 13 months ago and the company didn’t updated us about anything after that. Before Android Wear 2.0 update, Google took 2.5 years between version 1.0 and 2.0. That shows uncertainty on future of Google’s mobile OS.
There are over 50 watches running on Android Wear. All those will get the new name in software update over the next few weeks. Now we are sure that Wear OS 3.0 might come in Google’s upcoming I/O conference.
At the time when Apple Watches are leaving behind popular watch brands in terms of earning, Android Wear has not been selling very well. Samsung has also started focusing on Tizen-based smartwatches. Both Apple and Samsung offer yearly hardware, software, and SoC upgrades for consumers. Google should also focus on being regular if it truly wants to make Wear OS a success.
