Is Samsung forging a Google Glass competitor?

Google Glass has won the heart of many a gadgeteer since its selective release to Glass Explorers, but rumour has it that Samsung is also working on its own smart specs in an attempt to fight for the coveted position on your face.

Information on Samsung’s mysterious glasses have arrived courtesy of Eldar Murtazin, founder of Russian website Mobile Review. Murtazin’s predictions are sometimes a mixed bag, but he’s been spot on enough times in the past for us to take this snippet of news seriously.

According to his tweet, Samsung’s shadowy glasses will be called Samsung Gear Glass, borrowing the Gear moniker from the Galaxy Gear smartwatch.

This could mean two things. Firstly, the Gear Glass could be the result of a direct partnership between Samsung and Google (like its previous Galaxy Nexus smartphones).

However this seems unlikely given that the Gear Glass is rumoured to hit shelves in the same April-May release period as Google Glass. We can’t quite see Google being happy with a competitor to Glass the minute it’s unleashed to the public, so the Gear Glass could very well be Samsung’s separate entry into the smart glasses arena.

We presume that Google’s lawyers will have plenty of ammunition to fling at the Samsung camp if the new spectacles are released with the Glass moniker intact, but it could be nothing more than an temporary internal Samsung codename for the time being.

Go on Samsung, call them the Gear Goggles. You know you want to.

In his tweet, Murtazin expects an April to May period for the Gear Glass to be revealed, putting it around the same availability period as Google Glass. Should the Gear Glass be a competing product, it’ll be interesting to see Samsung’s take on it.

[Twitter via BGR]

Nigel Yap