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For Some Would-Be Google Glass Buyers and Devs, Delays May Mean Giving Up
ErnieKey writes with a Reuters story that says Google's Glass, not yet out for general purchase, has been wearing on the patience of both developers and would-be customers: "After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.' Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear? Or perhaps it's the invasion of privacy that is deterring people from wearing them. Regardless, Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers. From the article: Of 16 Glass app makers contacted, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects.
Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official website include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter.
"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-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.
Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.
Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.
They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.
Exactly. Everyone who is willing to drop $1500 on a gadget that is nothing more than a solution searching for a problem, has already done so.
The fulcrum of backlash against the device in an almost uniform, vehement, and studied way exposing Google's complete disdain for respect of privacy might have something to do with it as well. Pulling back the Oz Curtain and exposing that Google's business model is the complete ownership of your personal information for their profit might be just too much advance with just one product.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
As a GG app developer, let me give my perspective. There are plenty of potential applications, and few of those involve wandering around in public while wearing them. I developed an app for classroom management. The teacher wears the GG, and sees a "popup" whenever a student is stuck. The student could indicate this by using a clicker, or it could be indicated automatically if the student has several consecutive failures while using computerized learning, such as Khan Academy. This would be most useful for flipped classrooms so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. I also worked on a warehouse app, that would guide pickers to the destination rack and shelf. But I gave up. The problem is that GG seems to be stuck in "beta" forever, with no roadmap to ever turn into an actual released product. It is supposed to only be for "developers", and only for a price of $1500, which is way, way too high for broad applications. Google needs to get this product out, to the general public, at a reasonable price (~ $100). If they don't, it is going to die, or be replaced by a product from a company that knows how to ship a product.
"This would be most useful for flipped classrooms [wikipedia.org] so the teacher does not need to return to the desktop dashboard between helping students, but can go from student-to-student-to-student. "
Or...and I know this is a shocking concept...the students could raise their hands when they need assistance?
This is what the OP meant by a solution in search of a problem.