Brin: Google Glass Explorer Edition will ship “in a couple of months”

Google’s Project Glass Explorer Edition, the $1,500 limited-edition developer version of the wearable computer, will ship “in a couple of months” Sergey Brin has confirmed, after being spotted wearing a prototype headset in NYC this week. Brin, who has been a significant motivator for Google’s augmented reality and wearables R&D, revealed the rough timescale to Noah Zerkin, who recognized the Google co-founder on the NYC subway. The exec also touched upon how many Glass prototypes are in the wild.

According to Brin, who acknowledged that he was a part of the core Google X Lab responsible for developing Project Glass in addition to other high-concept research such as self-driving cars, around one hundred people outside of the X team currently have wearable prototypes. Exactly how many people are employed in Google’s R&D-centric X division is unclear.

Google took preorders for Project Glass Explorer Edition back at Google IO 2012, offering keen developers the opportunity to secure a unit in return for the not-inconsiderable sum of $1,500. However, select developers on the wait-list for a Glass headset will get an early opportunity to play with the wearable, as Google kicks off its Glass Foundry developer events later this month.

The first of these events, in New York City (a second, in San Francisco, will take place at the start of February) will see Google outline its new Mirror API, which will bridge the cloud and Glass headsets and allow developers to feed information from their apps to the wearable. However, attendees won’t be able to take away the Glass prototypes themselves.

Google previously said that it expects to have consumer versions of Glass on the market less than twelve months after the Explorer Edition sets start shipping. Pricing for the mass-market version is unknown, though Brin has indicated that it would be “significantly” cheaper than the $1,500 developer kit.