Did you know that Google Glass still
exists?
Yes, the gadget that launched a thousand
think pieces hasn't disappeared, though the absence of
hand-wringing about, say, Glass' privacy implications suggests a worse fate than bad
publicity. No one is going to worry about a product if no one is
wearing it.
To be fair, we the media are still paying a certain kind of
attention to Glass, much as The National
Enquirer pays attention to aging celebrities who may not
be long for this world. A recent Reuters
piece catalogues the many ways developers are defecting
from Glass. To which we say: stick a fork in Glass already, Google. It's done.
At least Glass appears to be done as a mass-market gadget for
consumers. Yes, Glass is still in beta, which means Glass partisans
could argue consumers haven't had a chance to embrace it. But if
the pent-up consumer demand was really there, why isn't Google
rushing to meet it?
The reality is that Google isn't a hardware company. Its
misadventure with Motorola shows that making and selling physical
stuff just doesn't align with how Google makes money. What Google
does know is software. Android is the
world's leading mobile operating system not because Google makes a
great phone that everyone uses, but because the company let other
phone makers use it. And Google could do the same with the wearable
operating system it's developed for Glass.
"Why not license it out and get out of the hardware business
altogether?" asks J.P. Gownder, who covers the wearable device
market for Forrester Research.
Fear of the unknown
Gownder himself believes it's too early to sound the death knell
for Glass as a consumer product, though he does say Google has a
tough job ahead if it hopes to get consumers to embrace something
so unfamiliar. "People don't know what to do with these devices,"
he says.
Apple, meanwhile, has a powerful channel
for introducing the gadget-consuming public to new products in the
form of its stores. If people are sceptical of what an Apple watch
can do, for instance, they will be able to go into an Apple store
and try one on. Not so with Google, which has reportedly
even closed the few physical locations it had set up to
introduce people to Glass.
Don't
miss
Gownder is convinced that Glass and other heads-up displays have
a strong future in the world of work, where everyone from surgeons
to petroleum engineers will find them incredibly useful for
specific tasks. As a general-purpose device, however, a kind of
smartphone for the face, the advantages aren't so clear.
The power of cheap
At least not for the Glass asking price of $1,500 (£953). The
price of a nice Mac laptop is just going to be too high to take a
chance on a gadget that may or may not be useful.
But even as the eulogies for Glass roll on, one of China's
biggest mobile phone makers appears to be jumping in with glasses
of its own. If the rumours are true, Huawei's Honor Smartglasses look like a
chunkier version of Google Glass and will cost much less. Budget
phones running stripped-down versions of Android have turned Huawei
into a handset powerhouse. A much less expensive heads-up display
could do a lot to drive adoption of smart glasses.
"It's always helpful to have something cheaper," Gownder says.
"We saw that in the tablet market."
Huawei will struggle, however, if no one is making apps to run
on its glasses. This is where Google comes in. Despite its
struggles, Glass can boast that plenty of major apps run on its OS,
including Google's own. If Google opens up the Glass software
platform the way it has Android, other hardware makers would likely
flock to it. For wearable hardware to succeed, Google doesn't need
to make its own glasses. It just needs everyone to see the world
through its eyes.
Source Article from http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-11/26/kill-google-glass http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/g_j/glass-music.jpg
Google could dominate wearables with Glass OS
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