Hyundai cancelled its Google Glass Blue Link app in favor of Android Wear

A little more than a year ago, Hyundai told the world that it was working on a Google Glass counterpart for its Blue Link platform. The app was supposed to launch with the 2015 Hyundai Genesis, but the car’s first availability came and went without any mention of Google’s head-worn computer. And while Hyundai did recently announce that it plans to release an app compatible with Android Wear devices very soon, it’s now official that the company’s Google Glass app won’t likely be getting the same treatment.

“The app was never released due to lack of demand for Google Glass,” a Hyundai spokesperson told me. “We used the learnings from the Blue Link Google Glass app to develop the Blue Link Smartwatch app, which launches very soon.”

As it appears, the reason for Hyundai backing out of their Google Glass offering is simply lack of demand. This makes sense considering how relatively successful Android Wear has been in the retail market (considering Glass never officially had a consumer presence); there are already several different affordable Android Wear devices available with software that’s much more widely supported. Notably, while the company definitely put their Glass app on the back burner to focus on Wear, there’s still some amount of possibility that a Blue Link Glass app will make it to market at some point in the future.

Interestingly, Google is—as announced yesterday—getting more serious about Glass. The project recently graduated from the Google [x] labs, and is now under Tony Fadell’s leadership in its own division. While there hasn’t been any official timeline announced, Google has been teasing what comes next for Glass, saying “we’re continuing to build for the future, and you’ll start to see future versions of Glass when they’re ready. (For now, no peeking.)”

If you have an Android Wear device and one of the more recent Hyundai models, however, it looks like you’re going to get to use your Google wearable to start, lock, and locate your car very soon.