Project Ara and the dream of a modular pocket computer

Google’s Project Ara is no more.

The failure of Ara shouldn’t be seen as the inability to make a modular smartphone where users can replace parts (after all, Fairphone seem to be doing rather well with Fairphone 2… I just wish the team would hurry up and get Sailfish running on the Dutch handset). Ara’s cancellation feels like the realisation of Android’s commercial nature.

Modular smartphones are not going to be as efficient as custom-built sealed units. The software cannot be tightly optimised around specific hardware, the modular components require connectors to a central spine, they’ll need to be larger to allow removal and handling, and it’s far harder to achieve economies of scale with, say, multiple camera modules.

Further to that, modular smartphone designed and marketed by Google would be at odds with Android’s place in the market. Android survives on being the ‘power’ mobile operating system that delivers faster and faster phones every year. Manufacturers push each other to make bigger numbers. Ara does not fit in with that vision, and as Google rationalises its internal business divisions, the conflict between Ara and Android was likely brought into focus.

If for some reasons Ara was a runaway success, Google would have taken its little skunkworks project and used it to damage the partners that offer far more Android activations and Google-account using consumers. Ara didn’t fail because of hardware (even though modularity is complex), Ara failed because it was the wrong business model for Android in general and Google specifically.

It’s now left to smaller companies like Fairphone and Puzzlephone to push the functionality and practicality of a modular smartphone. The gadget lover in me hopes they succeed.