Google's Project Ara is "designed exclusively for 6 billion people", Ara Developers Conference scheduled for April

When Google announced the sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, it mentioned that it would keep Project Ara for itself to be further developed by its Android team. As you may remember, Project Ara was announced by Motorola in October 2013, when it was still a Google company.

Today, Google revealed that the first Ara Developers Conference would take place between April 15 and April 16 in Mountain View, California. The conference will be held online, and we’ll be able to watch it thanks to a live webstream. It will “focus on the alpha release of the Ara Module Developers’ Kit (MDK).” According to Google, the MDK should be released online in April as “a free and open platform specification and reference implementation that contains everything you need to develop an Ara module.”

What is Ara? It’s a project that should allow users to make their own customized smartphone using various modules. Each module should include essential parts of the handset, like its display, camera, memory, and so on.

Google’s tagline for Project Ara is: “Designed exclusively for 6 billion people.”

Granted, it’s way too early to foresee what Project Ara can actually bring to end users. Anyway, Google is inviting developers “of all shapes and sizes” to take part of the project, “from major OEMs to innovative component suppliers to startups and new entrants into the mobile space.” You’ll find more on this project at the links below.

sources: Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara