Google just notified everybody on the Google Glass waiting list that it is “seeing the first few devices come off the production line right now.” Google says it wants to start shipping the devices as soon as possible and doesn’t want to wait until it has produced enough to fully satisfy demand. Because of this, Glass will ship out in batches to the 2,000 “Glass Explorers” who signed up at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco last year.
As far as we can see, those users who signed up for Glass through the #iwantglass campaign have not received this email yet and won’t be in the first batch.
Google says it will soon start notifying the first batch of users who will be eligible to purchase the Glass Explorer Edition for $1,500 by email. With the first devices ready to go, this means they could start shipping within the next few days.
Earlier this month, Google already confirmed to us that it would start shipping Glass within the next few weeks.
Google is clearly under some pressure to get Glass out to its developers before I/O 2013 kicks off on May 15th. Still, it is interesting to see that the company has decided to split the 2,000 devices up in batches. We don’t know much about how Google is building this first version of Glass, but we do know that Foxconn is producing them for Google in the U.S. The fact that it doesn’t have 2,000 devices ready to ship right away clearly points to the fact that these are still essentially public prototypes and that Google is still learning how to best produce them.
You can see the full email below.
