Category: north

Posted on

Google Acquires North, the Startup Behind ‘Focals’ Smartglasses

Google today confirmed in a blog post that it’s acquired North, the Canada-based smartglasses maker behind Focals. The acquisition price wasn’t disclosed, however early reports suggested it was around $180 million.

Founded in 2012, North (ex-Thalmic Labs) first set out to create Myo, a gesture-based armband. Pivoting from Myo and rebranding to North in 2018, the company then released Focals, which focused on creating a stylish, unobtrusive pair of prescription-compatible smartglasses.

“Over the last while, it became clear that aligning with Google would significantly advance our shared vision,” North said in a news brief.

The company says that it will be winding down support for its 2018 Focals smartglasses, and that Focals 2.0 is effectively cancelled.

North seems to be making a clean break with its legacy product, Focals 1.0. Starting July 31st, 2020, users won’t able to connect or use Focals or access their North accounts. The Focals app itself is also going to be removed from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

SEE ALSO
The Difference Between Smartglasses & AR Glasses, and Why Everyone is Confused

Refunds are being offered, as the company says in an FAQ that “[f]ull refunds will be given for all paid Focals orders starting June 30th, 2020 using the original payment method.”

The acquisition seems to have been a fairly quick deal, as North was talking up Focals 2.0 up until March 2020, advertising its prospective 2020 ship date.

This, you might conclude, may mean that Google is getting ready to completely integrate the IP somehow into its own Google Glass project, which has reemerged to serve the enterprise sector. It may equally as well rebrand Focals 2.0 as a Google device targeted at fashion-conscious consumers.

Is Google heading back into consumer smartglasses territory with its latest acquisition? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

The post Google Acquires North, the Startup Behind ‘Focals’ Smartglasses appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Google Acquires North’s Focals Smartglasses Business

Google confirmed it acquired North and its Focals smartglasses platform.

Reports had been circulating in recent days that an acquisition was in the works and now Google formally confirmed the move.

“Today we’re announcing that Google has acquired North, a pioneer in human computer interfaces and smart glasses. They’ve built a strong technology foundation, and we’re excited to have North join us in our broader efforts to build helpful devices and services,” Google’s Senior Vice President of Devices & Service Rick Osterloh wrote in a prepared statement. “We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing.”

The team coming on board at Google will stay based in Kitchener-Waterloo Canada, where North is located.

North was formerly known as Thalmic Labs and the group previously made the Myo gesture-based input device that looks vaguely similar to work being done at Crtl Labs, a startup that Facebook acquired last year. It looks like there’s a major gap in tracking robustness between what Facebook acquired in 2019 and what Myo had at launch in 2016 but there’s also a multi-year gap in between the technology developments. Instead of the arm-band, Focals smartglasses became the focus of the work at North.

Focals offered simple notification features similar to a smart watch and a basic display system in a slim pair of glasses. In a statement from the founders of North the company confirmed it would not be shipping the 2.0 version of the glasses.

Google, Apple, Facebook and others continue to build toward a augmented reality platforms but difficult problems need to be solved on a number of fronts before we might see a compelling consumer AR platform emerge in the coming years. Acquiring startups can also have cascading effects on the internal structure and hardware plans at major technology companies, and we’ll be curious to see how North impacts Google’s efforts in AR.

The post Google Acquires North’s Focals Smartglasses Business appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Startup Announces AR Eyewear That Looks Like Ordinary Glasses

The Google Glass was one of the first attempts to market augmented reality (AR) smart glasses to the general consumer market. The effort was largely a failure, with many analysts attributing some of the negative reaction to the poor aesthetics of the device. Since then the technology has moved on, and several companies are again cautiously looking at AR smart glasses for the consumer market, such as The North Focals newly announced AR eyewear.

The North Focals are the product of Canadian startup company North, who have designed a pair of AR smart glasses that look just like a pair of regular glasses with slightly thicker arms, making the technology considerably less intrusive than in many previous efforts.

North have put the device up for pre-order on its website, priced at $999 (USD), a price which is cheaper than either the Magic Leap One or Microsoft HoloLens, is still a fairly high price point, especially when compared to the cost of many virtual reality (VR) devices.

The North Focals can be equipped with prescription lenses if needed, but all users need to make an appointment with the company in order for the device to be customised to the user’s pupil width and focal length.

The device works be using a miniaturised projector inside the frame to beam content onto the user’s retina, which explains why the device can look so similar to a pair of regular glasses. The device does lack a camera, however, which means remote transmission features such as those seen in other smart glasses will be unavailable.

The creators of the device say that users will be able to access content such as text messages, calendar updates, weather forecasts, Amazon Alexa and AR navigation features. A smartphone will need to be paired with the North Focals in order to access most features, which will be done using Bluetooth.

For future coverage on new AR products ad services, keep checking back with VRFocus.