PARIS -- Google Glass is like the Apple Newton, the influential but famously premature mobile organizer, according to the high-profile investor Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures.
Speaking at the LeWeb conference here on Tuesday, Wilson said he believes the technology eventually will catch on, but likely built more unobtrusively into regular glasses. For now, he indicated, it's too primitive and awkward.
Apple's Newton was a commercial failure, famous for its handwriting recognition failures. But it turned out to pave the way for a mobile era, first the personal digital assistants (PDAs) popularized by Palm and then the modern smartphone era. It even laid the groundwork for today's immensely successful ARM processor family from ARM Holdings.
Polling the tech conference's audience, Wilson judged that about 10 to 15 percent of people were ready to wear Google Glass walking around on the street. That was higher than he expected -- but still a pretty small minority, especially at a tech conference.
Google Glass is still in its very early stage, with only the Explorer edition available for $1,500 in the United States. It's raised the possibility of a new class of personal apps and expanded the possibilities of wearable computing, but it has also triggered privacy-invasion concerns.