Google sought yesterday to steal a march on Apple and breathe life into a new market for “wearable” computing devices, as it showed off a range of stripped down internet services such as voice-activated search to feature on a coming generation of smartwatches.

Apple laid the ground last month for its own iWatch, with the announcement of a fitness app that would act as a hub for a user’s health information, much of it collected from around the body by sensors embedded in wearable gadgets.

The big US tech companies have raced to establish a wearables market as the growth in smartphone sales has levelled off in the developed world, carrying over the tactics they honed in the smartphone wars. Google’s approach, using a new version of its Android smartphone operating system, relies on rallying a range of electronics companies to make devices using its services.