Mentra Open Sources Their Smart Glasses Operating System
Mentra is following the Android playbook and making their MentraOS smart glasses operating system open source.
Apple is the only hardware company that sells smartphones that run iOS, but there are dozens of hardware companies selling Android smartphones. One major reason that is possible is because Android is open source and a huge benefit of that has been rapid development. Now Mentra is doing the same thing for smart glasses by making their MentraOS open source.
Google Glass first released for developers back in 2013, but was a flop. However, we’ve seen a resurgence in smart glasses interest in recent years. That has highlighted a serious problem: fragmented development resulting from proprietary operating systems.
Almost every manufacturer of smart glasses uses their own closed, proprietary operating system. That presents a massive cost to enter the market. It also limits apps, as independent developers either can’t create apps at all or need to target each platform separately.
By making MentraOS open source, Mentra is giving manufacturers the ability to bring new hardware to market with less investment and is giving developers the ability to create apps that will run on a wide range of smart glasses models.
That has already resulted in the release of several useful apps for MentraOS. Adoption by MentraOS in the industry will just accelerate the development and release of more apps.
In addition to Mentra themselves, there are currently two other manufacturers taking advantage of MentraOS: Even Realities and Vuzix. Others will surely jump on the bandwagon soon and makers can build their own smart glasses using MentraOS, too.