The dream of modular smartphone may have to wait. In a series of terse tweets, the official Project Ara Twitter account says the team behind Google’s modular smartphone platform has re-evaluated its previously announced plan to launch a pilot in Puerto Rico later this year.
“Market pilot re-route. Stay tuned for more details. #ProjectAra #recalculating,” says one of the account’s initial tweets. “And this is not goodbye Puerto Rico! Nos vemos en el futuro!” The account went on to say that more details will be released next week.
Based on the contents of the few tweets that were sent out, it’s unclear why Google and the Project Ara team decided to alter course, though, as several publications have noted, it may have to do something with the recent restructuring at Google.
Showcased at Google I/O 2014, Project Ara was presented as Google’s plan to “get to the next billion.” The open hardware platform came out of work done by the company’s Advance Technologies and Projects group, a kind of DARPA-like lab within Google that works on forward-thinking projects that may not present immediate financial returns.
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