Olympus announces Project Glass-style wearable display prototype
Just over a week after Google's spectacular demonstration of its Project Glass headset at Google I/O, Japanese camera maker Olympus is jumping back into the wearable computing game, announcing a new prototype of a glasses-mounted heads-up display.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already framed Project Glass as a glasses-based heads-up display in late 2011 and followed it with a video sample of the headset in May 2012. Oakley was also reported to be testing a potential rival, so Olympus’s prototype places a camera maker in an emerging competitive cluster rather than a one-company experiment.
The story matters because the field is beginning to draw hardware specialists with different starting points: Google’s Project Glass visibility has made the glasses-mounted display a category others must address.
First-order effects
- Olympus becomes a named contender in glasses-mounted displays, joining Google and Oakley in pursuing hardware that puts information in the wearer’s field of view.
Second-order effects
- Google’s Project Glass will face comparison not only with another technology company’s concept but also with Olympus’s camera-industry approach, raising the competitive value of proving a usable product rather than only demonstrating a prototype.
Third-order effects
- If multiple prototypes progress, wearable displays may develop as a contested hardware category shaped by companies’ ability to turn head-worn computing concepts into dependable products, rather than by Google’s early visibility alone.
The trend: Wearable computing is moving from a high-profile Google concept toward a multi-company race to define the viable glasses-mounted display.