MUNICH—Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co.’s first smartwatch faces a significant delay in its home market, according to Yang Yong, the company’s manager for wearables.

The smartwatch, with which Huawei aims to upstage Apple, sparked interest at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March. The gadget will hit the shelves in the U.S. and Europe in the third quarter, Mr. Yang said.

But consumers in the Chinese market will have a much longer wait.

“We’re experiencing some problems with Google ’s Android Wear [the watch’s operating system] in China,” Mr. Yang said, without being more specific. He didn’t rule out that the watch might not be available in China until 2016.

“It’s a new product,” the Huawei manager said, adding that the Apple watch also reached consumers behind schedule.