Google chairman Eric Schmidt hinted that the expected launch of Google Glass will now be delayed until 2014, with the first batch of explorer edition glass headsets being shipped to developers this week.
“The developers are beginning [to receive the devices] now and it would be fair to say there will be thousands in use by developers over the next few months,” Schmidt told the BBC. “Then, based on their feedback, we’ll make some product changes – so it’s probably a year-ish away.”
Eric Schmidt said that some changes might be incorporated into the Explorer Edition before a final consumer release is pushed ahead in early 2014.
Earlier, the search giant was expected to release Google Glass this holiday season, but it seems that the company has fallen behind its anticipated launch schedule.
Schmidt, however, did not comment on Google’s pricing intentions for the consumer edition of Google Glass. Earlier, it was expected to be available between $600, or around £400.
“In general, these kinds of body wearable devices will bring in a whole bunch of such concerns and the fact of the matter is, we’ll have to develop some new social etiquette. It’s obviously not appropriate to wear these glasses in situations where recording is not correct. And indeed you have already seen these sorts of problems with phones,” Schmidt explained
The Internet-connected glasses will feature a 5-megapixel camera, which is capable of recording 720p videos. The Glass will be compatible with any Bluetooth phone, however, a MyGlass companion app will be required to use GPS and SMS on the Glass. A 16GB internal storage space will be available on the device, out of which 12GB will be usable and will be synced with Google cloud storage.
