Microsoft to be Working on Google Glass Competitor

We’ve already told you that Microsoft might be working on a Google Glass competitor and now the rumors keep flowing. It seems like Microsoft has been ordering components for a heads-up device from Asia makers. We believe the rumor to be true, because of the patents that Microsoft has been filling for such devices.

Microsoft has been left behind lately and they failed to gain traction on the smartphones and tablets market, so they now probably try to move faster and innovate more. According to the Wall Street Journal, a person related to Microsoft’s Glass-like project has spoken to them and Microsoft is working on a competitor. But they haven’t been planning a release yet, as they don’t even know if the device is going to reach mass production.

Microsoft is determined to take the lead in hardware manufacturing to make sure the company won’t miss out on the opportunities in the wearable gadget market.

Unfortunately we don’t have any other information about their head-mounted device, but we hope to find out more soon, as they’re probably going to start testing it, if they aren’t already. We believe it could run on a simplified version of Windows Phone 8, as its live tiles seem suited for such a small display.

Microsoft has 78 patents related to head-mounted display, along with another 94 pending applications, which proves they are very interested in this.

The Mountain View-based company has been struggling hard to enter the hardware market, being mostly known for its software – Windows and Office. Microsoft’s latest hardware devices are the Surface RT and Surface Pro, two tablets that didn’t manage to gain much traction, due to their competition and lack of apps for their operating system. 

The wearable devices market is going to become huge in the following years, as people are eager to get their hands on Google Glass and smartwatches, but for the moment they are too expensive, bulky and not very attractive to the customers.

Most tech companies have been working on wearable devices lately and we expect to see a lot of them released in the next 6 months. It’s been rumored that all smartphone companies like Apple, Samsung, and HTC are working on wearable devices of some kind, being them smartwatches or heads-up displays.