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Google is teaming up with Samsung to tackle Meta and Apple within the resurgent marketplace for smart glasses and virtual reality headsets, nearly a decade after the corporate stopped consumer sales of its controversial Google Glass device.
Next yr, Samsung will release the primary device based on a new edition of Google's Android smartphone operating system adapted for headsets and glasses, in what the Alphabet-owned web company called the “next generation of computing.”
The collaboration on the device – codenamed “Project Moohan” – between Google and Samsung, whose alliance in Android smartphones created the primary serious competitor to the iPhone 15 years ago, comes 10 months after Apple introduced the Vision Pro headset.
But despite being Apple's boldest launch right into a recent product category for the reason that iPhone, the high-priced Vision Pro, with sales estimated within the lots of of hundreds, has struggled to draw consumers.
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have now change into a surprise hit. Made in collaboration with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, the device combines cameras with a virtual audio assistant in a light-weight frame. Google said it plans to make its recent Android XR system available to makers of smart glasses and virtual and augmented reality headsets.
“Advances in AI are making interacting with computers more natural and conversational,” Google said in a Blog post on Thursday. “This game changer enables recent prolonged reality (XR) devices like headsets and glasses to grasp your intentions and the world around you, helping you do things in entirely recent ways.”
According to an individual conversant in Project Moohan, the Samsung headset offers the same high-fidelity display and user experience to the Vision Pro, but comes with a “significantly” lower cost than Apple's $3,500 product come onto the market.
Android Sales to consumers ceased in 2015, although efforts to sell the device to businesses continued for several years.
Google has also previously tried to interrupt into the virtual reality market with its Cardboard and Daydream devices, whose displays used a smartphone. However, support for Daydream resulted in 2019.
The Silicon Valley-based company hopes that the recent wave of AI innovations, breakthroughs in image recognition and the power to have conversations with virtual assistants, have resulted in a greater consequence.
Google this week unveiled an updated version of its Project Astra prototype, a system for smartphones and smart glasses that enables users to ask questions on what its cameras see. The system is predicated on a new edition of its Gemini AI platform.
