Competitors stare down Google Glass
Glass act: Recon Instruments has engineered smart
sunglasses designed for the tough wear and tear of triathlons and other
harsh situations.Spurred by the coming of Google Glass, a handful of companies are joining the nascent market to float email, text messages and the internet in front of people as they ride their bicycles, buy groceries or pretend to be paying attention at meetings.
Many of the new glasses from Google rivals will have a different look from Glass and be aimed at specialised markets, said Shane Walker, an analyst at the research firm IHS, who is preparing a report on an expected surge in smart glasses and related products.
Recon Instruments, for example, has engineered smart sunglasses designed for the tough wear and tear of triathlons and other harsh situations that may not be suitable for the more sedately styled Glass.
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The double-decker SpaceGlasses from Meta have two projectors - one for each eye. (Glass has one projector.) The two projectors can create 3-D images of virtual objects like keyboards that hang like holograms in midair in front of the wearers.
Then, with the help of a hand-tracking feature, wearers can type on a virtual keyboard or play virtual chess. A lot of the new glasses will have features similar to those of Google Glass, including text notification and hands-free photography.
Critics have raised concerns that computerised eyewear will become yet another technological distraction - a way for people to choose the virtual world over the real one. Such glasses also risk raising hackles in social situations.
"They won't be the best thing to wear when you're at a party," said Clive Thompson, author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better.
But Thompson says he thinks the coming generation of smart glasses will offer unusual benefits, too, as apps are written that let them display not just texts, email and newsfeeds, but also a range of useful data alongside what people are viewing in the real world.
Mechanics peering into a car engine to repair a carburetor, for example, might see a virtual page from a manual or a computer animation explaining which part should be adjusted, and by how much.
Thompson, who enjoys repairing old laptops, is looking forward to that kind of help.
"It would be wonderful if we could see that information at the moment we need it to help us solve complex physical problems," he said.
So far, the bulk of smart glasses have been sold to developers who are writing applications for them, Walker of IHS said.
About 60,000 pairs will go out by year-end - including 10,000 Google glasses - generating about $US35 million in revenue, he said.
Next year, he expects, unit sales could reach the low millions. The early wearers of Google Glass, who competed in a contest to win the right to buy the specs, paid $1500 each, but that price will drop when Google officially introduces them next year, Walker predicted. The $1500 cost "is not the right price for a mass-market consumer device," he said. "The price has to come down into the range of a tablet or smartphone."
A substantial market is likely to develop around apps related to sports and health care, he said, as computerised glasses become part of the way people monitor their training routines and share what they are seeing with others.
The Recon Jet, for example, comes embedded with a one-gigahertz microcomputer, a high-definition camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and sensors to display training data like pedal power and rotations per minute. The glasses, to be available in February, will cost $US599.
The Meta SpaceGlasses are probably the most powerful of the new eyewear. Right now, they are chunky, cyborg-like affairs that must be tethered by cable to a computer to do their jobs. Even so, the company has sold about $US800,000 worth of them to more than 1200 developers, said Meta's founder, Meron Gribetz. A sleeker version, selling for $US667, will ship in April.
The M100 glasses from Vuzix, due in November at a cost of $US999, connect through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to smartphones that can remain in a user's pocket or briefcase.
If smart glasses become popular, so that we're peering not just at our smartphones but also at the sideshows in our glasses, we will probably have to learn new social conventions. Thompson, who wrote an article on Google Glass for The New York Times Magazine, is wary of the prospect of a world full of people transfixed by computer displays.
"It's rude to be staring at a display when you are around people," Thompson said. "We'll have to develop social protocols for when to use these devices, and when to turn them off."
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