First-order effects

• Wear 2.0 owners finally get the two capabilities the preview cycle promised — Android Pay and locally installed standalone apps — but launch-day bugs mean early buyers absorb the cost of the rushed finish despite the months-long delay.
• For hardware partners like Huawei, whose watches were previously capped by what Android Wear allowed, the new version removes some of those platform ceilings without any change to their devices.

Second-order effects

• Shipping the Play Store onto the watch itself sets up the follow-on move confirmed later in 2017, when new Wear 2.0 features began arriving through the Play Store rather than full OTA updates — letting Google iterate the platform independently of slow OEM firmware cycles.
• Rivals reading these reviews see an opening: Samsung's later Galaxy Watch Active 2 doubles down on its own tightly integrated app stack, positioning vendor-controlled ecosystems against Android Wear's more open but rougher experience.

Third-order effects

• If launch-buggy major releases become the pattern for Google's wearable platform, watchmakers and buyers gravitate toward vertically integrated alternatives, fragmenting wearables into vendor ecosystems the way phones once split between stock and skinned Android.
• Decoupling feature delivery from OS versions via the Play Store points toward wearables being treated as app platforms in their own right rather than accessories updated only when the phone-side OS moves.