Motorola appears to be giving up on smartwatches
Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider
While the company already announced it wouldn't launch a new version of its Moto 360 watch in 2016, the company told The Verge on Thursday that it won't have one early next year either, when Google plans to release the new version of its Android Wear operating system for watches.
Motorola's head of product development told The Verge that there isn't "broad appeal" for wearable devices like smartwatches.
Android Wear has seen its own problems. Google was forced to delay the launch of Android Wear 2.0, the new version of the OS, this year until early 2017. The company didn't give a reason why though.
Motorola isn't the only manufacturer that has turned against Android smartwatches.
Huawei and Asus, which have made Android Wear watches in the past, both said they don't plan to make new devices this year. There has even been speculation that Huawei would abandon Android Wear altogether. A spokesperson for Huawei told Business Insider earlier this year that the company remains committed to wearables, but didn't mention those running on Android.
Business Insider has also heard from people familiar with the situation that internally there's still interest in Android Wear at Google, and that the company is considering making its own smartwatch, just like it made its own smartphone this year.
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