Google’s Project Ara modular smartphone effort has been delayed until 2016, which was attributed to “lots of iterations…more than we thought”.

The Project Ara team began tweeting last week that it was set for a “market pilot re-route”, which would impact its planned efforts in Puerto Rico. And now, while it has said that it is “not goodbye Puerto Rico”, it is looking at “a few locations in the US”.

Project Ara was initially the brainchild of Motorola, but remained under Google’s control after the handset maker was sold to Lenovo. At one point, a launch date of January 2015 was mooted, although this came and went.

While the concept of a modular phone is not new, Project Ara has been seen as something of a bellwether due to its backing from deep-pocketed Google.

But in a world where mobile devices are increasingly tightly integrated from components to software, modular devices have a number of disadvantages. Due to the need for each module to function discretely, size and form concessions have to be made, and the device operating system also needs to be modified to support communication between the modules.

And with manufacturers able to bring integrated products to market at very competitive price points through the use of readily-available components and integrated platforms, the cost benefits of a modular device (with piecemeal upgrade paths) are also tough to achieve.

Indeed, analyst Richard Windsor noted in his Radio Free Mobile blog that “Project Ara will be another financial black hole like Google+.”