Google Glass

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The major selling points of Glass are the very things which make it a huge threat to the existing mobile telecom industry.

Its wearable. Granted, the glasses now may not be fashionable but once it is released you can expect them to start coming out in all shapes and sizes.

Bone-conduction sound system. This is a huge one. This little gadget allows you to hear a phone call without audio actually leaving your skull. You won't have people listening in to what the other person is telling you. Better yet, your Glass will not be blaring information out into the open like those annoying driving GPS 'turn here' directions.

HUD. Another big one. The glass turns your entire field of vision into an overlay display. No one has delivered something like this to the public market and the applications are enormous.

BIG BIG selling point: Augmented Reality. This literally enables augmented reality to become functional in every day life. Google was working on integrating augmented reality into all its products years and years ago... and nobody realized why since using that concept in a smartphone was not very user friendly (basically people had to walk with the phone pointed in front of them all the time to use it). Well.. now you know why. Glass. Not only are they delivering the device but they already have in place the software and hardware infrastructure to support its function. This is really big since the telecom and computer industry have always done the opposite: They release the new toy and then work to build the supporting stuff for it.

Voice recognition. Not a new thing but it removes the need to use your hands for input. You can easily find videos online of a Glass user just telling the device to search for directions, etc.

Multiple functions. It can make phone calls, it searches the web, it enables you to send and receive video in real time (you can activate camera and allow another glass user to see what you're seeing in real time), it does everything a smartphone can do, it can take pictures....and all this hands-free.

You can expect the price of a Glass to drop to about 400~800 dollars in a year or two of its release..just like the IPAD/Iphone.

I think Glass will really replace cellphones in just 5 or 6 years. When people see how useful and practical they are they won't have a problem wearing glasses (in the many fashionable designs available by then). Seeing someone with a handheld smartphone will be as weird as someone pulling out one of those 10-oz coke bottle sized cellular phones of the 80s. Ya know, the ones you could use a club in case of an emergency.

How does this bone-conduction sound system work? What is the difference between this and current phone systems? I've never heard of it before.

If they say use of mobile phones can cause brain tumours etc, surely this system will be even more likely to cause harm(?)

I think they will have a problem getting people to wear the glasses as a lot of people just don't want to wear glasses full stop,

Then there's all the privacy issues.
Parents won't like them at all as they will make it a lot easier for paedophiles to take photos of their children, so the glasses could get tarnished with this type of image if it's often just lone men wearing them. Women wouldn't like to be around men wearing them say on the beach also (although to be quite honest a lot of women would probably like being photoed - many seem to have no shame any more these days! )

The technology needs to be integrated into the glasses to the extent that no one could tell them from a normal pair of glasses - this is when more people will wear them in my opinion as currently they are too obvious.