Bad news for consumers hoping to get Glass in the near future, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt hinted at a release timeline in an interview today, and it’s not looking good. On the BBC Radio’s “World at One“, Schmidt gave a long interview where he touched on several topics including Google’s driverless cars, privacy, and his new book. The interview starts at 27:45 and he talks Glass at 32:30. Interviewer Martha Kearney asks, “How soon is [Google Glass] likely to come onto the market?”
Schmidt’s response:
“There will be thousands of [Google Glass] in use by developers over the next months, and then based on their feedback, we’ll make some product changes, and it’s probably a year-ish away.”
Google’s released early copies of the wearable product to lucky folks, mostly in the development community. But the rest of us will have to wait. As we reported last week, it’s against the terms of service to sell or trade one of the “Explorer Edition” devices and Google reserves the right to remotely brick covert Glass. Since Google Glass must be tied to your Google account, there’s really no way around their lock down until the consumer version of Glass is released.
Also, it’s worth noting that this was an off the cuff response to an interviewer’s question and not and official Google announcement. So hopefully Schmidt’s erring on the side of caution and a wide release of Google Glass is still slated for late 2013!
[Via: BBC World at One]