Early Google Glass Adopter Says The Product Is 'Doomed' In 2014
Google needs to get the price below $300 and make a lot of adjustments to its API, battery life, and design, Scoble writes on Google+.
"Price is gonna matter a LOT," he writes. "But I'm hearing they won't be able to get under $500 in 2014, so that means it's doomed. In 2014. When they get under $300 and have another revision or two? That's when the market really will show up. 2016, I say."
That prediction fits in line with Business Insider Intelligence's Google Glass forecast, which says the product will not become mainstream until 2016.
Here's a summary of why Scoble thinks Glass is doomed in 2014:
- People have too high of expectations for Glass.
- Glass in its current iteration is "too hard to buy and acquire."
- There aren't enough apps. For instance, it's still missing Uber and Foursquare, and it's still lacking support for Facebook.
- The UI itself simply can't handle a lot of apps.
- The battery doesn't work well for shooting video. Scoble says it only lasts 45 minutes for video.
- It's too hard to push images from Glass to your smartphone in real time.
- There's no "contextual filtering. When I'm standing on stage, why does Glass give me Tweets? Why can't it recognize that I'm at a conference at least and show me only tweets about that conference?," he writes.
- There's no easy way for developers to let Glass users test out their apps.
Even though it might be doomed in 2014, Scoble still loves his Google Glass.
"That all said, I'm still wearing mine," he writes. "See you next week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. I'll have mine on, even if +Chris Voss takes me to a strip club. Oh, wait, maybe not. :-)"