Mobvoi, an artificial intelligence start-up in China partly funded by Google, aims to build up the adoption rate of Android smartwatches on the mainland with the opening of its app store for these devices, it said this week.
Google’s app store cannot enter the country. The company’s Gmail and other services have been unavailable in China for several years.
“It is an app store supported by Google and will be pre-installed on all platforms for Android smartwatches,” Li Zhifei, co-founder and chief executive of Mobvoi, said in Beijing on Monday.
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Google has been trying to bring many of its services back to China, including its Android Wear OS.
As of last September it entered China and was pre-installed on several smartwatches from Motorola and China’s Huawei, but those devices suffered from a paucity of apps supporting them, said a spokesperson from Mobvoi.
“We are excited to support [this project], but the running of the store is entirely Mobvoi,” said David Singleton, vice president of engineering from Google.
He suggested Google will not profit from the move or wield any control over the store.