Google reportedly discontinues the Google Glass AR headset once again. The now-discontinued second iteration of the headset was developed for the business sector rather than consumers.
Google Reportedly Discontinues Google Glass AR Headset Once Again
Google immediately will halt selling its augmented reality glasses, the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, the tech firm on Wednesday announced on a support page. The announcement in question marks the second time in the past decade that Google has discontinued the head-mounted optical display.
Tech giant, Google has been very active in VR and AR for years now, making its first foray into sales of smart glasses back in April 2013 with the release of Google Glass. The $1,500 headset however was greatly seen as expensive and invasive, and Google at the time stopped selling its first Glass edition in January 2015.
Google Stopped Selling Its First Glass Edition in January 2015
Google, Two years later, entered the market once again with a hardware revamp of Glass in a similar design. And instead of pursuing the consumer market, the company aimed the customizable Glass Enterprise Edition at the business sector, specifically for factories and surgeons. The latest edition however got a speed boost in 2019 with the addition of a faster Qualcomm XR1 chip, which is a low-power processor that is designed for lightweight AR and VR devices.
Google Plans To Continue Supporting the Glasses until Sept. 15
And although Google has said that it would stop selling the headset as of Wednesday, it, however, plans to continue supporting the glasses until Sept. 15. The company said that the glasses will continue to work after Sept. 15, but it does not plan to issue any software updates and its preinstalled Meet the Glass app may even get to stop working after that date.
What Google Has To Say about the Discontinuation
The support page did not reveal any reason for the discontinuation, nor did a representative from Google when asked. “For years, we’ve been building AR into many Google products and we’ll continue to look at ways to bring new, innovative AR experiences across our product portfolio,” the spokesperson from Google said.
