Having a camera or a mic on the glasses themselves seems like something I'd mostly want to avoid for privacy, and having a speaker just seems like gilding the lily when we already have a variety of headphones to choose from.
Having a camera or a mic on the glasses themselves seems like something I'd mostly want to avoid for privacy, and having a speaker just seems like gilding the lily when we already have a variety of headphones to choose from.
Smart glasses inevitably cost in those ranges because the exotic displays used on them are costly to make and/or operate. Inkjet OLED on silicon or reflexive monochrome LCD with RGB sequential front lighting combined with a prism system or things of that nature.
IOW, those excessive feature sets isn't drawn from product concepts or user stories, they're drawn backwards from cumulative parts and engineering costs to justify MSRP. Same reasons as why almost all EVs are marketed as premium products, they can't make them cheaply so they're adding extra glitters in paint to justify price tags.
If anyone could make displays smaller than a pinky fingernail at $5 that can be driven with an Arduino... then there would be lots of smart glasses that are just Bluetooth picture frames.