The U.S. Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general jointly filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market.
As part of its response to the DOJ lawsuit, Apple confirmed to 9to5mac that it spent three years developing an Apple Watch for Android but ultimately abandoned the idea.
In the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, they used Apple Watch as one of the evidence to prove that Apple has a monopoly position:
Apple’s Apple Watch is currently only compatible with iPhones. Therefore, if Apple can guide users to buy Apple Watch, it will be more expensive and troublesome for users to switch to other brands of smartphones later, because then they need to give up the expensive Apple Watch and buy a new, Smart watch compatible with Android system.
In response to the Department of Justice, Apple confirmed for the first time that they had seriously considered introducing Apple Watch support for Android, but said that after three years of exploration, they found that due to technical limitations, they could not build an Apple Watch that supports Android. Watch.
This is consistent with a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman last year, who had previously discussed Apple’s plans to try to bring the Apple Watch to the Android platform, but he believed that it involved more “business considerations” than technical issues.
