Google is to stop producing its wearable technology Google Glass in its present form, but is still committed to the idea of smart glasses, the company has said.
The technology, which delivers news, messages and calls directly to a user’s field of view, has been on sale in the UK since June, and in the US since 2013.
In a statement posted to its Google+ account, the company said the Glass team would move out of the “Google X” incubator labs and become a separate division under current manager Ivy Ross.
She will answer to Tony Fadell – the chief executive of Nest Labs, the home automation company Google bought for more than $3bn (£2bn) last January - but will have autonomy to run the project, Google confirmed.
The company said that the Glass Explorer programme, which closes on 19 January, was “a kind of ‘open beta’ to hear what people had to say.”
“As we look to the road ahead, we realise that we’ve outgrown the lab and so we’re officially “graduating” from Google to be our own team here at Google,” the statement continued. “You’ll start to see future versions of Glass when they’re ready.”
The company has given no specific date for when the next version of Glass might be available.
