Earlier this year it was announced that the Google Glass Explorer program would be shutting down. It seems that despite Google’s best efforts, the Google Glass wearable did not catch on with consumers as well as they would have liked. While we can look forward to seeing what the next-gen Google Glass will look like, not all is lost just yet.According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that smart glasses like the Google Glass have found a new lease on life amongst industrial workers, such as those working in factories at Boeing, Daimler, and United Parcel Service. Thanks to the use of these smart glasses, workers won’t need to carry with them manuals or printed instructions as it can all be viewed through the smart glasses.
In fact these industries have found so much use for the wearables that estimates have been raised where it is now predicted that smart glasses could sell as much as $300 million this year, more than triple that of last year’s projections which were at $90 million. According to Tom Bianculli, the VP of Zebra Technologies that sells similar headwear, “Style points don’t get you very far in an industrial environment, but productivity does.”
Boeing echoes those sentiments in a statement made by Fred Edman, the company’s manager of manufacturing research and development. According to Edman, “By having to look at a piece of paper, you’re doing a lot of back and forth time. With Glass, we can set up a process to show them how to do it. They don’t have to do any paper cycling.”
Filed in . Read more about Google Glass and Wearable Tech.