The latest dead Google project is Android Things, a version of Android meant for the Internet of Things. Google announced that it had in fact abandoned the project as a generic IoT operating system in 2019, but now there’s an official closing date thanks to a new FAQ page about the OS’s demise.
The Android Things dashboard, used to manage devices, will stop accepting new devices and projects in just three weeks – on January 5, 2021. Developers can continue to update existing deployments until January 5, 2022, after which Google says ” the console is completely rejected and all project data is permanently deleted, including build configurations and factory images. “
Android Things was a stripped-down version of Google Phone OS intended for the Internet of Things, a network of small, inexpensive devices such as sensors and smart home devices. The idea was that Android would bring broad hardware compatibility, an established app SDK, and easy access to Google’s cloud platform to IoT, along with regular security updates, which are currently unheard of in the Fire-and-forget IoT firmware space. Android gets a lot of opposition for its inability to update any smartphone quickly, but that’s based on smartphone standards. In IoT, where your device is likely to be never getting a firmware update, Android’s typical three to six month late update cycle would be an incredible upgrade to the nightmare security world of IoT.
For Android Things, Google actually took the Apple-style update strategy that many wish the company would take for Phone Android. Operating system customization was prohibited, and Google said updates would be centrally distributed by Google to each device for three years. IoT administrators only had to click the “send update” button on the Android Things dashboard, which Google has created specifically for remotely managing Android Things devices and sending OS and app updates.
The problem with Android Things was that Android is very heavy, and while a smartphone operating system can be extended to cars and TVs quite easily, Android Things devices have always been bigger, more energy-hungry, and more expensive than typical IoT form factors. Google tried to get rid of the operating system by removing things like the system UI, settings, widgets, telephony, USB support, NFC, biometrics, and more, but it never got a small, cheap form factor. I think the smallest test form factor was a 2-inch square board that used a low-end smartphone chip (a Snapdragon 212) you’d normally find on a $ 100 smartphone.
The failure of Android Things in the IoT space led to a shift towards smart speakers and smart screens built by OEMs. As far as we know, Google never built a device based on Android Things. Its own smart displays and speakers use a modified version of the Google Cast platform, which may be due to the fact that Google is consistently undermining its Android Things-based competition, such as the Lenovo Smart Display.
“Android for Everything” has some winners and some losers
Android Things was part of what we will call the “Android for everything” strategy, with Google attempting to extend the Android for phones model to other form factors. The company is pushing a free operating system into a market segment, giving device manufacturers an easy, low-cost way to get started with a solid, updateable operating system with a strong developer and app ecosystem. The best example of this, of course, is regular Android for smartphones – of course you could build your own operating system, partner with hardware vendors for support and build your own SDK, and you could try to continue development after launch and send security updates and hope an app ecosystem will emerge. But Google is giving it all away for free! Building it all yourself would cost money, while Android doesn’t. You have to sign a few contracts with Google and follow a few rules, but would you rather have your next quarterly earnings report include heavy line items for long-term operating system development, or would you rather start selling stuff with Android now?
After phones, Google’s next most successful market with this approach is likely TVs, where several Smart TV vendors can provide Android TV and get access to all major streaming services, great hardware support, and even access to a few games. There’s a lot of TV competition from Roku, Samsung’s Tizen, LG’s WebOS, and others, but Android TV is doing well. Google’s market with the second greatest potential is probably automotive infotainment systems, where car manufacturers typically struggle to keep up with smartphone experience, and a sales pitch like “get Google Maps and tons of media apps in your car!” is pretty good. Android Automotive is just starting to hit the market on the Polestar 2.
In the “losers” category, we have Android watches, also known as Wear OS, which never took off due to a lack of chips. Qualcomm finally made a semi-modern smartwatch chip this year, but it seems too little, too late. Android for tablets, which are really just Android phones, never worked out because Google didn’t bother to maintain the OS tablet interface or a range of Google tablet apps. Google’s “Daydream VR” group started cooking Android-for-VR headsets – they are both phone-powered headsets and one or two standalone models. Android’s app ecosystem and touchscreen have never really translated to VR, so it’s not clear why you’d want an Android headset. The phone-based headset is officially dead, and Google has pulled VR features out of the Android codebase with version 10.
When Android Things launched in May 2018, Google promised “free three-year stability fixes and security patches” for every Android Things device, and told developers that the hardware was “certified for production use with guaranteed long-term support for three years.” This put Google on the hook until May 2021, but based on both the FAQ and the official Android Things release page, it seems that Google has not kept that promise. The last Android Things release listed was August 2019, bringing Google’s actual update support to one year, three months. Android Things will no longer support new devices from two years and eight months after launch, and the whole thing will shut down three years and eight months after launch.