Google steals Apple's crown?

Early last year a pic of a guy wearing Google Glass surfaced. He was in the shower, clearly having a great time. The big deal? The issue commentators found with the pic was the fact that the guy in question, a developer at Google, seemed a little compromised in the “coolness” stakes. Other images showing nerds (and I’m allowed to use the word as I am one) wearing Glass began to paint a picture of a product decidedly less-than-cool.

To Google’s credit they’re trying to bring an entirely new product category into the mainstream, taking the crown from Apple as consumer electronics category creators. But the challenge with Google is going beyond making geek chic. If anyone can challenge Apples' dominance of the consumer electronics market it’s a contender that can take great UX and translate it into an enjoyable hardware-mediated physical experience like wearable computing.

Even if Google is able to pull off truly category defining product marketing it still means competitors like Apple and Samsung can still adapt and refine their own products to effectively compete within the space. However, not a single consumer electronics company has hinted strongly at anything that could compete with Glass. The fact that no other key competitor is rushing out a Glass analogue is testament that analysts are probably adopting a wait-and-see attitude to Google’s stab at the wearable technology market. Even taking into account the wrist wearing devices introduced by Samsung and Sony to sync with mobile devices no other competitor has positioned a visual HUD-type system to deliver an on-demand user experience. So whilst Glass may prove to be a step forward in terms of wearable technologies it's far from certain whether Google has definitively beaten traditional consumer electronics giants at their own game.