Google Glass might go on sale for about $300, when it finally becomes available to the public at large. That's according to a researcher at a market research firm in Taiwan, who put his name behind the figure at a seminar.
Industry analyst Jason Tsai of the Topology Research Institute has thought long and hard, and has come up with a $300 price tag for the consumer version of Google's wearable computing devices, Google Glass. He based his prediciton on the bill of materials - the cost list of all of the components that go into Google Glass - which he has developed, according to the China Post's report, via the Register. Tsai revealed his opinion at a seminar on wearable devices in Taipei.
The display ends up being the highest cost component of Google Glass, in Tsai's expert opinion, costing somewhere in the range of $30 to $35 each. Those displays will be manufactured and supplied, most likely, by Himax Display Inc. That's because Google recently bought about 6.3 percent of the company from its parent Himax Technology, with the option to invest more and acquire 14.8 percent next year. Himax creates liquid crystal on silicon chips, which are used in heads-up displays like the Google Glass's.
Tsai's $300 dollar figure may put pressure on the Mountain View giant, if that becomes the expected price. Right now, Google Glass Explorers (who had to win a Twitter competition and were hand picked by the company to test the beta edition of Glass) had to pay $1,500 for Google Glass. At $300, that would make the public edition at a fifth of the cost, which is pretty low, even when you consider that mass production lowers the cost.
Google is expected to release a consumer edition of Glass either sometime late this year or 2014, according to the report. Keep with Latinos Post Tech for more information as the highly-anticipated Google Glass gets closer to reality (And by the way Google, I'm just kidding about the "Dorky" factor).