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by jmiskovic 1746 days ago
When the necessary technology can be properly miniaturized into glasses format, the revolution will inevitably happen. No matter how many companies failed before, the one that succeeds will have complete new market for itself.

It's like saying that Apple didn't learn anything from Palm when they launched iPhone.

3 comments

Did you say Palm? I’d KILL for a 5G B&W e-paper screened Palm.
It will have the new market for itself until someone else can get a product with the same technology to market as well. It's hardware, why would there be a first-mover advantage such that they will have the whole market to themselves?

There are dozens of manufacturers building smartphones with camera modules reasonably close to the required form factor. No one yet has figured out the ultra-low-power video recording or ultra-high-power-density battery construction required to put these cameras into a glasses format, but when that does come true I don't see any reason why it will be exclusive to the first one to succeed.

Sure, Facebook does seem to have a stranglehold in some domains due to their network effects and first-mover advantage, but why would that be the case for hardware?

Wearing cameras in your glasses must become socially acceptable. It’s hard to see how technology will solve this social problem.
When technology is common enough, the social changes follow. Think about mobile phones. It used to be considered incredibly rude to use your phone for calls, email, or texting when you were with other people physically -- you were supposed to be 100% paying attention to the people you were with. But as phones became ubiquitous this stigma went away.
Probably, avoid making them look like cameras. I have several sensors in the notch of my iPhone, but only one of them looks like a camera.
Miniaturization
Optics imposes a hard lower bound on the degree to which lenses and sensors can be miniaturized.