Are smart glasses about to come back into fashion?

By

Susan Spies

Published
Feb 21, 2017

Dust off your Google Glass Explorer editions. According to new data, smart glasses is where the smart money will be in the wearables market over the next five years.

Interest in "traditional" wearable form factors -- i.e., smartwatches and fitness bands -- is already starting to slow, or so says Juniper Research, whose latest white paper claims that although such devices are set to make up 75% of the global market this year, will only represent 50% come 2021.

At the same time, smart glasses will represent 11% of the market, or an estimated $9 billion in revenues.
According to research author James Moar, the stigma of smart glasses generated by the launch of Google Glass is starting to fade and will soon be forgotten as more devices that look like traditional sunglasses such as GlassUP come on to the market.

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Their image is also being rehabilitated by the continued success of Snapchat that decided to go with image-capturing sunglasses as its first piece of hardware.