Sundar Pichai, the senior vice president at Google overseeing the development of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, has revealed that his company is planning to release a software development kit (SDK) based on Android for makers of wearable devices, such as smartwatches, in the next couple of weeks, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
Mr. Pichai noted that Google is releasing its Android software developer kit for smartwatches well before actual devices hit the market so that the company gets “plenty of feedback” first. It seems that Google is going to follow the same regime for wearables as it does in mobile devices i.e. making Android available for free to phone and tablet makers. With an SDK for smartwatches, Google will get an opportunity to attract developers and bring users into an ecosystem powered by its software.
Smartwatches are among the first wearable computing devices, but Pichai said that Google hopes its software platform will help developers create many types of wearable devices. He threw out the possibility that one day, Google’s software would be used in a “smart jacket” with sensors. Asked about the recent acquisition of smart thermostat maker Nest Labs, Pichai said Google is thinking about creating a “mesh layer” of software to make its various devices work better together.
Google is planning to unveil its own smartwatch at a Google developer event in June which like the Nexus line of smartphones, will be manufactured by LG Electronics.
