Google launches parts store for modular smartphone

Google will set up a virtual store where customers can buy parts for smartphones. It is part of Project Ara, Google’s initiative to develop a modular smartphone. It is unclear when the sale will start.

In an interview with Purdue University, Google CEO Paul Eremenko, who is responsible for Project Ara, said that a parts store will eventually appear online. Here, customers can buy parts for the modular smartphone that Google is working on. The ‘shopping experience’ should be equivalent to that of the Play Store, where Google sells content and mobile devices, but otherwise there are many details missing.

For example, it is not yet known whether the parts store can only buy components that are suitable for plugging into the Project Ara smartphone, or whether it should grow into a universal store where there is also room for parts from other modular smartphones. It is not yet known when the store will be launched.

Google will show a fully functional prototype of Ara at a developer conference in December. The first smartphone from the project should be on the market in the spring. The parts store will probably only be online at that time. It was previously known that the parts in an Ara smartphone are hot-swappable.