Google has announced a ‘limited’ sale offer of Glass in the US on April 15 for US$1500, as an extension of its Glass Explorer program.
The voice-activated wearable gadget, which is currently available only to a hand-picked group of Glass Explorers, will be available only for US residents next Tuesday for about 24 hours.
“On April 15th at 9am EDT, you’ll have a limited time chance to join the Explorer Program,” read the Google Glass sign up page.
“To discover new places, sometimes we need to leave the map behind. And that’s what Glass Explorers do. They are the first to make, to tinker, to create, to shape, and to share through Glass. We’re expanding little by little, and experimenting with different ways of bringing new Explorers into the program.”
Google wrote in a Google+ post, “Every day we get requests from those of you who haven’t found a way into the program yet, and we want your feedback too.”
“That’s why next Tuesday, April 15th, we’ll be trying our latest and biggest Explorer Program expansion experiment to date. We’ll be allowing anyone in the U.S. to become an Explorer by purchasing Glass.”
Google also added that “The Explorer Program is still US-only. To everyone outside the US… Sorry 🙁 We’re just not ready yet to bring Glass to other countries.”
This is the first time the product will be available to the wider public, previously being restricted to application developers involved in Google’s Explorer program.
Google first accepted around 2,000 pre-orders for the wearable gadget at Google I/O 2012 conference. Later that year, the company promoted Google Glass for a wider audience with more than 8,000 headsets.
Experts claim this move to have mixed response, citing the privacy concerns raised by the wearable gadget. Earlier this week, a study also revealed that 72 percent of Americans to have expressed privacy concerns over Google Glass.
