Project Ara: Alphabet Inc (GOOG) Cancels Modular Smartphone Initiative

According to a new report from Reuters, the company has suspended the project, as the move is “part of a broader push to streamline the company’s hardware efforts”.

The idea for the Project Ara modular phone was that people could swap and change elements of the unit, so, for example, they could change the camera or battery as their preferences dictated. Former Motorola president Rick Osterloh rejoined Google earlier this year to oversee the effort.

“No easy task but Google certainly seem the best placed to try, and their underlying premise of Ara is the creation of an open Android smartphone hardware platform”. The project envisioned creating an ecosystem of snap-in/snap-out components that would enable users to customize their devices on the fly with cameras, speakers, extra storage and even health modules such as glucometers to help diabetics test their blood sugar levels. This means that the company won’t be releasing its modular phone, although previous rumors stated that 30 Google employees were already using Project Ara phones as their main device.

Now we can scratch Project Ara off that list because news today from Reuters is that Google has plans to shelve the project.

It also said at Google I/O that it planned to have a consumer model of Ara on sale in 2017.

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG,GOOGL) has reportedly stopped work on its Project Ara smartphone efforts.

NewDealDesign, a San Francisco-based design studio, worked with Google up until a year ago to bring Project Ara to life. In theory consumers would have the option to interchange the brains or system on a chip (SoC), WiFi and screen modules.

Project Ara was one of the flagship efforts of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which aims to develop new devices, but it had various stops and starts.

Google has not given up on the technology behind Project Ara and we could perhaps see Project Ara partners bringing modular smartphones to market through possible licensing agreements. So the dream of a modular smartphone might be delayed rather than dead… maybe.