Many industry observers deemed smart glasses to be a failure when Google famously stopped developing them in 2015. This move came after a series of public relations incidents where people objected to Google Glass being used to record movies and people in public places. And while there certainly are serious privacy concerns associated with smart glasses, Google restarted development for enterprise use in 2017. Since then, advances in Augmented and Mixed Reality services have reinvigorated the market for smart glasses use in the enterprise and the devices are set to make a comeback in 2019.
As proof of this, Microsoft recently announced a major deal to supply its HoloLens to the U.S. military in November 2018 for a total value of up to US$480 million. The deal will equip American troops with up to 100,000 AR headsets which will be used both for training purposes and in active combat situations. Microsoft has admitted that up to now enterprise sales of HoloLens have been relatively slow, as less than 50,000 units have been sold, but deals like this show that there is tremendous potential (and budget) for smart glasses to be deployed beyond the consumer space. As new technologies such as AR/MR (Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality), voice control, embedded sensors and even 5G start to become used in smart glasses, the industry is expected to be a major focus of many industry use cases in 2019.
While there are dozens of smart glasses vendors in the market today, IT departments need to use caution when selecting a vendor. Some smart glasses companies which are startups are in a precarious financial position and have folded, such as the US-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG), which was working with KDDI. Even some of the bigger players have decided to exit the market, such as Intel, which cancelled its Vaunt smart glasses project in April 2018. These are the five leading smart glasses vendors currently in the market: