Google to shut down Android Things early next year

Google has announced that Android Things, a heavily stripped-down Android-based operating system for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, will shut down.

According to the company report, the new implementation will be applicable as soon as possible in the next year.

The Android Things Dashboard, which is used for managing devices, will stop accepting new devices and projects in just three weeks-on on January 5, 2021. Developers will be able to continue updating existing deployments until January 5, 2022, the company said in a statement.

After the given date, the console will be shut down completely for non-commercial use and all project data will be permanently deleted. The only products that can run Android Things will be the ones built on commercial hardware SoMs (system-on-modules) from vendors like NXP, Qualcomm, and MediaTek.

Google launched Android Things back in 2016 as a simple operating system for use on a variety of smart appliances. The search engine giant originally wanted to create an Internet-of-Things OS where it would handle the “heavy lifting” of maintaining a platform so that developers could just focus on products.