These $600 skiing goggles from Oakley are specialized computers implementing sensors and a near-to-eye display to bring the sport of downhill skiing into this fresh century. It's a new reality. Take a look.
"Welcome to innovation beyond the limits of possibility. Oakley Airwave™ goggles combine world-class performance, protection and comfort with a display that integrates GPS, Bluetooth® and more with a host of onboard sensors to give you instant access to a world of information. The revolutionary design allows you to view jump analytics that show distance, height and airtime. With preloaded maps available for many resorts, you can find your location and even track others in your group. Additional sensor information includes altitude, speed and vertical descent data. Bluetooth connectivity allows pairing with a compatible smartphone for immediate viewing of incoming calls and text messages, and if your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone has music, your playlists can be accessed and controlled."
KEY MOBILE TRENDS: smart glasses, post-smartphone era, wearables, AR, proactivity, lifelogging.
EVENT HORIZON: Four years.
Smart glasses: there's lots of noise now, but exactly where is the market opportunity? The search is on.
Companies are throwing their chips on the table. There's Google, Baidu, Vuzix, Motorola Solutions, and Sony. I have also heard talk of advanced heads-up display accessories coming from adjacent industry players, so expect a headset computing flood during the next four years. In fact, now Microsoft is rumored to be developing a product in this category as well. Clearly there are those who see market potential.
It's interesting to note that the world's largest search service providers —Baidu, Google, and possibly Microsoft— are entering the un-market for such devices. Despite the fact that prospects are entirely speculative, the greater risk for these players is being absent early and then very late to market: search of the future could be very contextual and augmented right in front of your eyes.
The great unknown is not the technology or pricing, but rather it is consumer acceptance of the the product category. While interest in Google Glass appears sincere among developers and the "innovator" consumer class, mainstream adoption could face a long line of hurdles.
The concept is not entirely untested. Head-mounted displays or near-to-eye displays have been around for more than a decade. I've tried several of these headsets at industry trade shows over the years and have found the experience rather bizarre, like watching a move through a child's View-Master. But studies have shown that users of NEDs did enjoy the experience and were positively surprised by the display quality. But if you are wondering why you don't see many people wearing NEDs on your morning train, check out the picture at the bottom of this post.
Yes, there is the social stigma of looking like a Star Trek character, but in addition to the fashion police, consumers will have other concerns. For example, the police police, the potential adverse health effects, and privacy worries.
But for smartphone vendors, the worry could be that the post-smartphone era is in sight. Devices like Glass could combine the latest in miniaturized computing with the freshest business-model thinking. We could begin to see local search and other contextual services become an integral part of devices. So, smartphone vendors, don't look away: the day might come when it's time to get in your customer's face.
CNET's Top-Five Reasons for Google Glass:
A NED nerd. How many of these have you seen around? Sony's head-mounted display:
Over time, technology developments for the military and high-end enterprise bleed into markets below and eventually affect the markets for mainstream consumer devices.
Check out this Borg-like, wearable computing device from Motorola Solutions (not the Google-owned Motorola unit). The intention is to keep field workers well connected to back-office support. It relies on voice input for its UI, leaving the hands completely free for getting them dirty.
Near-to-eye display devices are nothing new: I've seen various gadgets from mainstream CE vendors such as Sony more than a decade ago at trade shows. But now the pieces are coming together. As Google has demo'd with their Project Glass, the components and software is out their for fresh approaches.
Slashgear reports that pricing for the HC1 is in the “$4,000-$5,000” range. In the world of truck rolls and field work, this could be a very reasonable investment.
A heads up: computing form factors have the potential to evolve in amazing ways:
In a smartphone market filled with look-alike, black rectangular products, is it time to eye fresh, new form factors?
Way back in the year 2000, I had the opportunity to try a few near-to-eye displays being pitched at several major trade shows. The devices came from both start-ups and mega consumer electronics vendors which saw these gadgets as a potential new computing form factor.
So, the rumor is that Google is actively working on developing a stand-alone heads-up display device that could be, in effect, "smart glasses." The glasses would run a thin version of Android on top of an ARM processor, have voice recognition, and a series of sensors such as gyroscope and accelerometer to detect head movement and direction.
Apparently one of the key applications of the glasses is to support augmented reality. Such glasses could, for example, detect what products the user might be looking at using a front-facing camera and then display additional information and pricing details for the user. We could begin to wonder what new types of information collection this would enable: Google already knows what we're looking at in the virtual world. Now the company can begin to collect information about what people are looking at in the physical world as well.
Privacy issues aside, I think Google and other vendors of HUDs and NEDs have an uphill battle. While I see discreet wearable computing has significant potential, I can't say that I see eye-to-eye with such an in-your-face approach to keeping users connected. But as always, it's important to remain open-minded to change, and maintain a heads-up approach to monitoring any potential form factor shifts and opportunities.
