The Moto 360 and Android Wear are headed to China. With Lenovo now owning Motorola, the first may not be as big a surprise but the latter certainly is more of one. Google withdrew from China back in 2010. With many of its services blocked by the Chinese government, Google will partner with Chinese companies to offer alternatives to offer a similar experience as Android Wear provides in other parts of the world.
Among the companies that Google is working with are Mobvoi for search and voice recognition and Sogou for the mapping functionality. It will also be possible to install apps on the Moto 360 but those apps will be provided by local app stores rather than the Google Play app store.
The process to decouple the many tightly integrated Google services from Android Wear required “quite a lot of work” according to David Singleton, engineering director for Android. For example, Google had to replace the “Ok Google” voice command trigger with one where you say “Ni hao Android” instead.
The introduction of a version of Android Wear customized to the Chinese market follows rumours that Google may be looking to return to China with a curated Google Play store that would adhere to the country’s rules.
It remains to be seen if other manufacturers such as ASUS and Huawei will also adopt this new version of Android Wear to sell their smartwatches in China.
Source: The Verge