The next Google Glass is ‘Enterprise Edition,’ expanded testing later this year
We told you yesterday about a new device that passed through the FCC—codenamed GG1—and many have speculated that it's the next generation of the Google Glass hardware. While it's often suggested that the device …
Context & Ripple Effects
The GG1 device that surfaced through the FCC yesterday is now being tied to a repositioned product: rather than a second swing at consumers, the next-generation Glass is an 'Enterprise Edition,' with expanded workplace testing planned before the end of 2015. Follow-up reporting filled in what that means physically — a larger prism, an Intel Atom CPU and optional external battery pack — and a more durable build, with the device foldable, water resistant, and ruggedized for work environments.
The strategic signal came from the Wall Street Journal's coverage weeks later: Google is quietly putting this version into the hands of business customers as a clip-on for existing glasses, while the consumer model slips to 'at least a year away.' That sequencing matters because it reframes Glass's future around workplaces where a head-mounted display solves a defined task, not around the social-acceptability problem that stalled the original.
First-order effects
- Business customers testing Glass get hardware built for their conditions — ruggedized, longer-running via the external battery option — while the consumer launch is explicitly deferred by at least a year.
- Intel picks up a named design win in the wearable category, supplying the Atom chip that powers the Enterprise Edition.
Second-order effects
- Competitors in industrial wearables face a better-resourced rival aimed squarely at factory-floor and field-service deployments, pressuring them to differentiate on vertical software rather than hardware alone.
- By attaching to prescription frames instead of replacing them, the clip-on form lowers adoption friction for employers — eyewear makers become distribution partners rather than casualties.
Third-order effects
- If the enterprise-first pattern holds through the formal 2017 announcement — prescription-lens support, faster processor, better security — the smart-glasses category settles into a split structure: workplace tools sold on utility and durability, consumer versions waiting on a social case no one can yet make.
- Wearables that stumble in retail increasingly get rebuilt as B2B products, making corporate pilot programs the de facto R&D pipeline for head-mounted computing.
The trend: Consumer-rejected wearables are being rebuilt enterprise-first, with Google's Glass arc from consumer flop to rugged workplace tool becoming the template the industry follows.