Someday augmented reality will become a mainstream feature of ordinary eyeglasses and sunglasses for everyday, general-purpose consumer use. But that day is many years in the future.
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Reading the news, it’s easy to conclude that consumer smart glasses are on the brink of becoming available.
Apple is famously toiling away on future iGlasses, or whatever it will call them. A recently published “continuation patent” (which is a patent that the company wants the Patent Office to keep examining to change the scope of the original patent) describes what Apple calls “data glasses” capable of integrating virtual content with the real world, including for StreetView-style turn-by-turn directions and other location-based applications.
The patent office recently published several new smart glasses patents for Apple. One reveals new technology Apple is working on for holographic display of objects in glasses.
Facebook’s “Reality Labs” has been working on augmented reality glasses for a few years. A patent filed this week by Facebook describes a “cartilage conduction audio system for eyewear devices” that would project sound into the ear without blocking ambient sounds.
And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was spotted this month visiting the headquarters of Luxottica, which is a global eyeglass giant known to be interested in partnering with smart glasses makers.
These projects by Apple and Facebook won’t ship as consumer products for many years. The technology simply isn’t ready.
In the meantime, smart glasses are growing in adoption and importance for all kinds of businesses uses, and for five reasons. Smart glasses are powerful for business but a non-starter for consumers because smart glasses ...
1. Are socially unacceptable
When smart glasses look just like ordinary prescription glasses and sunglasses, without conspicuously thick frames or awkward protrusions, consumers will be happy to buy and wear them.
For the next several years, however, glasses with sensors, electronics and batteries that can power cameras and screens will look ugly, bulky and oversized.
Take the poster child for smart glasses, the now-venerable Google Glass.
Google introduced last week an updated version of its smartglass product, called Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. This is the third version of Glass — the first of which was the experimental “Explorer” version introduced by invitation only six years ago, and the second was the first Enterprise edition of the product.
The new Glass has an updated design, a lot more power inside and a lower price: $999.
The new Glass has an 820mAh battery (up from 570mAh) to power the Android 8.0 Oreo running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 processing platform (with a quad-core 1.7Ghz CPU). This processing power is necessary, according to Google, to power computer vision and advanced machine-learning capabilities. The headset has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
Google claims the new Glass can charge in 17 minutes.
The camera is upgraded to 8 megapixels, but the display is still 640 x 360.
Three beam-forming microphones isolate speech for voice commands.
A multitouch gesture touchpad on the right side of the headset provides touch controls.
A built-in accelerometer and gyroscope inform software of the angle and motion of the wearer’s head.
Safety glass lenses and new water and dust resistance make Glass suitable for factory or shop work. Alternatively, they can be fitted with prescription lenses.
Google Glass has limited capabilities out of the box. It’s intended to be purchased in large numbers and customized with purpose-built functionality by the company that buys them. Google says the price is $999, but the actual cost depends on quantity purchased, plus services chosen, such as software customization, customer support and training.
Dozens of companies exist to provide end-to-end Google Glass solutions for businesses.
Google Glass is suitable for doctors, factory workers, delivery people and others. But it’s not suitable for normal wear in polite company. Glass is, and will remain, a work tool that just doesn’t look right for everyday wear out and about in the world.
And the same goes for all other products introduced to date — they’re acceptable for professional use, but not consumer wear.
2. Solve business problems but not consumer problems
Google’s Explorer program was launched so that Google could become educated about how various kinds of people might use Google Glass. It turns out that almost all the usage involves simply taking pictures with the camera. Picture-taking is not something consumers really need help with.
But manufacturing and warehousing are a different story. Glass is currently deployed at scale (440 Google Glass units) by Deutsche Post DHL Group in its warehouses.
Boeing and Airbus use Glass and their own AR applications for manufacturing airplanes and warehouse work.
These and other companies need their employees to both reference massive amounts of information and communicate with one another, while keeping both hands free. So Glass and other smart glasses solve these real-world business and enterprise problems.
A company called North this week unveiled the ability to use its Focals smart glasses with Google Fit, which gives fitness data in the headset, a clear consumer application. (Most of the functionality for North’s glasses offer smartwatch-like notifications from a smartphone.)
But North also announced support for Google Slides in its North Focals smart glasses. You can use the integration by downloading a special “Focals Connect” Chrome extension, then loading Slides into the browser. Your speaker notes appear to you in the glasses’ screen, invisible to your audience. A control ring on the glasses enable you to move forward and backward through your presentation.
These glasses probably wouldn’t be ideal for normal business or sales presentation. They’re too bulky (and therefore distracting) and create a psychological distance between speaker and audience.
However, presentation notes in smart glasses is a great application for training, which enterprises do constantly.
It’s also true that integrating AI will greatly boost the utility of smart glasses for enterprises. An Israeli company called Plataine created a Google Glass app that uses image recognition AI and Google’s own Dialogflow to create a Glass-specific virtual assistant. The app can recognize objects and display instructions or other information based on what it recognizes.
The same goes for medicine. A teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School called Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is using Google Glass. Doctors get important information about patients in emergency situations, and claim that in more than one instance lives were saved when glass delivered information about drug allergies in time to prevent injection.
3. Often need tethering
Google Glass is too underpowered for some enterprise applications. So many new enterprise and business products have to be tethered to a computer that’s more powerful than puny ones that can be comfortably attached to the wearer’s head.
Earlier this month, Epson announced new smart glasses designed for business users called Moverio BT-30C, which are scheduled to ship next month. The glasses connect to either an Android smartphone or a Windows PC via USB-C. They remain tethered during use.
The glasses require an app, and the app’s display appears to float in midair. It can place up to three screens in space, and you move from one screen to the next by turning your head. Turn to the left and see a video; turn to the right and see your notes.
The functionality is potentially great. But no consumer is going to walk around with glasses that have to be tethered to a phone or laptop.
4. Don’t have all-day battery life
Screens and cameras and the electronics that power reasonably good smart glasses need batteries that are either too big or too weak. Smart glasses need to double as prescription glasses, and consumers won’t accept glasses that don’t last a full day.
Business applications, however, need to last only for a workday.
5. Are too expensive
Google Glass’s price came down a little, but it’s still more expensive than an average smartphone. When enterprises such as Boeing buy them by the hundreds and use them for complex manufacturing, the cost is justified. But the gadget-happy public won’t pay more than $300 or $400 for what is essentially a wearable smartphone accessory.
Google Glass is often lumped into the same category as Microsoft’s Hololens or Magic Leap’s One glasses. In fact, these products exist in an entirely different space. Their displays are far higher in resolution and enable visual objects to appear to interact with physical objects (for example, showing animations that appear to be resting on a physical table).
With Glass, a small rectangular display hovers in space without any connection to the physical world, and the placement of that display depends entirely on the orientation and position of the wearer’s head.
So while Google Glass and other devices in the same class will be going online at scale in enterprises over the next three years or so, the Hololens or Magic Leap class devices are more than five years out for significant penetration into enterprises. And more than 10 years way for consumers.
So while the technology press generally believes that consumer smart glasses are a year or two away from general consumer adoption, the reality is that this timeline applies only to enterprise applications. The consumer toys everyone wants are five to ten years into the future.
The following is a script from 'Sticker Shock' which originally aired on Oct. 7, 2012, and was rebroadcast on June 15, 2014. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer.
For many of us, summer means a new pair of sunglasses. But bet your eyes popped when you saw the price tag. If you don't go to places like Walmart or Costco, you could easily be spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a pair that cost just $30 15 years ago. Talk about sticker shock!
And it's not as though things have changed that much: they're still made of a couple of pieces of plastic or wire, some screws and glass. Why should a pair of glasses cost more than an iPad? Well, as we first reported in October 2012, one answer is because one company controls a big chunk of the business.
Never has there been so much choice: Ray-Bans, Oakleys, glasses for running, and skiing, and even reading. A staggering variety of colors and designers. You'd think the competition would force the prices down.
One reason it hasn't is a little known but very big Italian company called Luxottica. If you own a nice pair of specs or shades, they're probably theirs. Luxottica is the biggest eyewear company on earth. It shuns publicity, but CEO Andrea Guerra invited us in for a look. And it was eye-opening.
Lesley Stahl: Do you have any idea how many people in the world are wearing your glasses right now?
Andrea Guerra: At least half a billion are wearing our glasses now.
Luxottica started here as a small tool shop in Agordo, a dot of a town in the Italian Alps, when frames were still made of mountain goat horns. This was the factory in 1961. This is what it looks like today.
Last year, Luxottica made 77 million pairs of sunglasses and optical frames. They don't make prescription lenses. We saw mountains and mountains of glasses in boxes headed to China, India, Brazil, and, above all, to the U.S.
Lesley Stahl: But they're very expensive. They can be very expensive.
Andrea Guerra: They can. This is one of the very few things that are 100 percent functional, 100 percent aesthetical, and they need to be on your face for 15 hours a day. Not easy, and there's a lot of work behind them.
Luxottica's product manager Isabella Sola explained that the company revolutionized how we see glasses.
Lesley Stahl, wearing sunglasses: You think I look cool?
Isabella Sola: Yes. I think so.
Lesley Stahl: I think I look cool too.
It wasn't that long ago that glasses were uncool. You only wore them if you absolutely had to.
Lesley Stahl: I can remember, not that many years ago, my mother telling me that men will never ask me out if I wear my glasses. I was to go blind if I wanted dates.
But Luxottica took this medical device and turned it into high fashion, by making deals to conceive and create high quality, stylish specs for nearly every brand and label you can think of.
Isabella Sola: We have Prada. We have Chanel. We have Dolce Gabbana. We have Versace. We have Burberry. We have Ralph Lauren. We have Tiffany. We have Bulgari...
They're not even called 'glasses' anymore. They're 'eyewear!'
Lesley Stahl: Do people really wear this?
Isabella Sola: Yes!
Once glasses became 'face jewelry' Luxottica could charge a hefty markup.
Lesley Stahl: But you know something: I know that there are some less expensive glasses that look very similar to the very expensive. For example, this is your Vogue line which is not that expensive.
Isabella Sola: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: And this is?
Isabella Sola: Coach.
Lesley Stahl: Coach, which is much more expensive. If two women walked down the street with these on--
Isabella Sola: Yes, they almost look the same.
Lesley Stahl: Almost the same.
Isabella Sola: But it's almost. It's not the same.
Not the same because of details on the frames like the little Chanel Cs, Polo ponies, or Tiffany blue. Luxottica wouldn't tell us their markup, but glasses like these can sell for up to 20 times what they cost to make. And all the glasses are designed by Luxottica.
Lesley Stahl: So you design thousands of pairs of glasses?
Isabella Sola: We do, yes.
Lesley Stahl: Where does Tiffany come into it?
Isabella Sola: Tiffany comes in at every stage, basically.
The fashion houses send in sketches of their new collections as inspiration. And down on the factory floor, you can see the work that goes into differentiating the brands: plain plastic temples go through a painting machine and come out 'Versace!' Stones are inserted one-by-one into the Dolce Gabbana; and leather is carefully threaded for that Chanel-bag look.
Lesley Stahl: If people begin to know that Chanel glasses were designed by Luxottica, would it change the way they think about Chanel glasses?
Andrea Guerra: You know, that would be totally wrong, that would be crazy.
Lesley Stahl: But why isn't the Luxottica name a brand name? I mean, are you in any way hiding it?
Andrea Guerra: Hiding it?
Lesley Stahl: Yeah.
Andrea Guerra: Not at all. We are listed.
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange where Luxottica shares are soaring. The company raked in $10 billion last year. But their best seller wasn't a fancy fashion house label. It was a brand they outright own: Ray-Ban.
Originally made by Bausch + Lomb for the U.S. Army, since JFK, nearly every president has worn them, not to mention Tom Cruise in 'Risky Business' and 'Top Gun.' But the brand was poorly managed, cheapened, and eventually put up for sale. The Italians bought it in 1999, and had a strategy to turn things around:
Andrea Guerra: We stopped selling sunglasses from Ray-Ban for more or less a year.
Lesley Stahl: When you bought it, you could buy them for, I don't even know how little money--
Andrea Guerra: Twenty-nine dollars.
Lesley Stahl: Twenty-nine dollars at the drug store, at a gas station, and you took them off the market.
Andrea Guerra: We refurbished everything.
And made them upscale: today those $29 pairs can cost 150 and more, and Ray-Ban is the top-selling sunglass brand in the world.
Lesley Stahl: When Americans go to buy these glasses, I'll bet 99 percent think they're buying an American brand.
Andrea Guerra: It is an American brand, what's wrong with it? I mean, it's an American brand owned by Italians. I think the world is... The world is this.
Lesley Stahl: It is the world, and we didn't realize it, that's the thing. Before I started working on this story, I'd never heard the name Luxottica.
Andrea Guerra: Yeah.
Which is all the more surprising since Luxottica not only bought Ray-Ban, they also bought LensCrafters, the largest eyewear retail chain in North America. So now they make 'em and they sell 'em. It's great for business, but is it great for the consumer? Mark Weikel was then president of LensCrafters.
Lesley Stahl: How many non-Luxottica brands do you sell here?
Mark Weikel: We probably have a few brands that aren't Luxottica.
Lesley Stahl: Mostly Luxottica?
Mark Weikel: I would guess, mostly Luxottica. Yuh.
Lesley Stahl: So since Luxottica owns you, does the consumer get a break on glasses made by them in LensCrafters?
Mark Weikel: What the customer gets at LensCrafters is a variety of services and products, including this broad assortment of frames--
Lesley Stahl: Mark, you're not answering my question. I'm asking if you charge less for frames made by Luxottica since you're the same company.
Mark Weikel: I think every competitor, every retail optical brand, determines what their pricing is on whatever their brands are.
That's a no. Consumers do not get a break. At LensCrafters, the average cost for a pair of frames and lenses is about $300. You may think -- well, there's choice in the mall for other glasses. But Luxottica doesn't only own the top eyewear chain in the country, it owns another large chain: Pearle Vision, and Oliver Peoples, and several boutique chains. And it runs Target Optical and Sears Optical. And we're not done, Luxottica also owns Sunglass Hut - the largest sunglass chain in the world.
Lesley Stahl: So is there a free market in eyewear?
Brett Arends: No, I don't think there really is. I think one company has excessive dominance in the market.
Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Arends says the appearance of variety is an optical illusion.
Brett Arends: The reality is, it's like you know, it's like pro-wrestling competition. And it's actually fake competition.
Consider what happened to Oakley, the world-famous maker of advanced sports eyewear.
Brett Arends: Oakley was a big competitor. And they had a fight with Luxottica. And Luxottica basically said, 'We're dropping you from our stores.' And Oakley--
Lesley Stahl: They refused to sell their glasses in their stores.
Brett Arends: Yeah, there was a dispute about pricing, and they dropped Oakley from the stores, and Oakley's stock price collapsed. How is Oakley going to reach the consumer if they can't get their sunglasses in Sunglass Hut?
Andrea Guerra: There were some issues between the two companies in the beginning of the 2000s. But both of them understood that it was better to go along.
Lesley Stahl: Better to let you buy them?
![One One](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125260211/250850661.jpg)
Andrea Guerra: I wouldn't say this. We merged with Oakley in 2007.
Lesley Stahl: You bought Oakley. They tried to compete and they lost and then you bought them.
Andrea Guerra: I understand your theory, but they understood that life was better together.
So now Luxottica owns the two top premium sunglass brands in the world, Ray-Ban and Oakley. But Luxottica points out there are other players -
Lesley Stahl: Who's your biggest competitor in the United States?
Andrea Guerra: You could say Walmart.
Also Costco and emerging on-line companies like Warby Parker. But other competitors told us Luxottica has them in a chokehold: if you make glasses, you want to be in their stores; and if you have stores, you want to sell Ray-Bans! So Luxottica can set the prices as high as it wants.
Brett Arends: Luxottica's dominance, it's what's called a price maker which means that essentially it can set prices and other people will follow in its wake.
Which he says is why glasses in general cost so much, even at your local optician's.
Brett Arends: The whole point of a luxury brand is to persuade people to pay $200 for a product that cost $30 to make.
Lesley Stahl: Well let me show you something. Why is it any different than my shoe?
Brett Arends: Well, to some extent there's actually a lot of comparisons. The difference is that the entire shoe industry isn't made by one company. And the same company doesn't also own all the shoe stores.
You'd think well, surely insurance companies covering vision would complain. But guess what? Luxottica also owns the nation's second largest vision-care plan: EyeMed, covering eye exams and glasses.
Lesley Stahl: What don't you own?
Andrea Guerra: A lot of things.
Lesley Stahl: Not really...
Andrea Guerra: [laughs]
Lesley Stahl: You seem to, really. Why not combine everything under one name?
Andrea Guerra: I think people love diversities, people love to have different brands, people love to have different experiences.
Lesley Stahl: It's an illusion of choice if you're all owned by the same company.
Andrea Guerra: I think this is totally wrong. The question is, what kind of choice consumer has. It's not a question of how many you own.
Lesley Stahl: How does the consumer benefit from all this? Your prices are still high.
Andrea Guerra: If you go to a shoe company, would you say that their prices are high?
Lesley Stahl: You're trying to tell me it's all worth all that money.
Andrea Guerra: Everything is worth what people are ready to pay.
And you know what? He's right. People are ready to pay. A lot.
Lesley Stahl: I bet they cost a fortune.
Christie: They're not too expensive.
Lesley Stahl: [laughs]
They cost almost $400. With prescription lenses, the price could jump to 600 or more.
This past March, Luxottica added to its roster what could be considered the final frontier in glasses: the company signed a deal with Google to design, produce, and distribute Google Glass, adding a sense of style to the web-connected eyewear due in stores as early as next year.