New Report Suggests Google Glass is Losing Support

Reuters reports that Google Glass, Google’s foray into wearables, is apparently losing the interest of developers, customers and even Google itself.

Google revealed its Glass wearable device in 2012 as a prototype that was to eventually become a consumer product, using its optical head-mounted display to project images before the user’s eyes, with functions akin to a smartphone. It was positioned as a very real attempt at ubiquitous computing, the idea that computer functions are everywhere and ubiquitous to everyday life, but as Reuters  reports, this vision appears to be losing pace.

The report points to the fact that Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin was recently seen not wearing the device, perhaps summarising the company’s attitude to it. Although, he apparently said that this was due to him leaving it in the car.

They do highlight however that developers have reportedly started to lose interest in Glass. A number of large developers have decided to no longer build apps for the wearable, citing there being a lack of a market.

“If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There’s no market at this point,” said Tom Frencel, the Chief Executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook Inc-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.”

The report goes on to discuss how the device has been seen on eBay, apparently for half the $1,500 price of the “Explorer Edition”. Searching for Glass on eBay reveals a number of “Explorers” willing to part with their device, with most of them selling or receiving bids at prices lower than their original price tag. This example is selling at $500 less, with another starting at $700. In total there were 158 results for Google Glass at time of writing.

The presence of the device on eBay suggests that it may not have boded well with the few consumers using the device, possibly due to its “nerdy” appearance, as described in the report.

After further delaying the release of Glass, the report considers whether Google will ever widely release Glass to consumers, as it remains to be seen whether it would be a successful consumer product.

Source: Reuters