Google Glass Is Surprisingly Now A Growing Business

Google Glass may not have been making headlines, but it’s alive, and it’s actually a growing business.

Google unveiled Google Glass back in April of 2012, but at $1,500, the product was pretty expensive and not so stylish.
The product was discontinued in 2015, and there hasn’t been much said about it.

According to the developers who license the smart glasses technology from Google Glass’ enterprise focused “Glass at Work” program, the flop is now a growing business for the work place.

“It’s a big market today, and it will be an even bigger one in the future,” said Brian Ballard, founder and chief executive officer at Upskill, a Google Glass partner.

Upskill makes augmented reality apps for workers in the field and has customers that include Boeing and GE.

Ballard said they are targeting companies that will need “thousands of these devices in the field to do one job.”

Augmedix is another company using smart glasses. The San Francisco-based start-up with nearly 1,000 employees, are using Google Glass for a majority of their customers that are doctors at large hospitals. The company sells its application to 12 hospitals to help doctors transcribe notes from patient interactions.

According to CEO Ian Shakil, the company expects to deploy 1,000 Google Glass devices by the end of 2017.

The company has said, “We’ve already done tens of thousands of patient interactions.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and have not been compensated for this article.