Following a report that claimed that Project Ara has been canned, Google has officially responded to that rumor.
Google has confirmed that Project Ara has been suspended. Unfortunately, the spokesperson declined to offer any other details to VentureBeat, so the official reason for Ara’s suspension is still unknown.
Yesterday’s report suggested that while Google won’t be launching a Project Ara phone, it could end up working with other companies to help bring Ara tech to market, like through a licensing agreement.
Project Ara was originally announced by Motorola in October 2013, and the project moved to Google as part of Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Google had been updating us on Ara’s progress every few months, and last we heard, Google was planning to launch a developer version of Project Ara in fall 2016 and a consumer version in 2017. However, it’s said that Google decided to scrap Ara as part of an effort to streamline its hardware projects.