Sev­er­al brands debuted apps for Google Glass last year, in part to try to cap­ture the atten­tion of ear­ly adopters, as well as to take advan­tage of this whizbang new tech­nol­o­gy. A year lat­er, Google has announced it has 100 approved Glass­ware apps and new brand­ed inte­gra­tions con­tin­ue to pop up here and there. How­ev­er, while wear­ables are poised to take off in a big way in 2015, the future of Google Glass – and, there­fore, its brand­ed apps – remains uncer­tain. So what does that mean for brands?

With the debut of Apple Watch in ear­ly 2015 and excite­ment sur­round­ing devices like Fit­Bit, Nike+ Fuel­band, and Peb­ble Smart­watch, wear­ables are cer­tain­ly a hot buzz­word these days and are only poised to get big­ger. And that means it’s a space brands are watch­ing and exper­i­ment­ing with.

And, to date, much of that exper­i­men­ta­tion has been with Google Glass apps.

In Octo­ber, for exam­ple, British auto man­u­fac­tur­er Jaguar rolled out its British Intel­li­gence mar­ket­ing cam­paign, which includes an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence with Blip­par, an app avail­able on Google Glass. The inte­gra­tion will allow users to “blip” print adver­tise­ments in Conde Nast pub­li­ca­tions by look­ing at them through Google Glass to acti­vate addi­tion­al dig­i­tal con­tent.

Star­wood Hotels, too, has a Google Glass app in beta, the SPG for Glass app, which it says allows Google Glass wear­ers to search hotels by voice or GPS, call and book any hotel, view upcom­ing stay details, and access account infor­ma­tion and turn-by-turn direc­tions.

Accord­ing to the Star­wood web­site, the app is in beta and “will be updat­ed based on mem­ber feed­back and new func­tion­al­i­ty added to Glass.”

In June 2013, dig­i­tal pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny Coupons.com announced KitchMe for Glass, a recipe and meal prepa­ra­tion app for Google Glass.

Accord­ing to a blog post, KitchMe for Glass fea­tures include recipe search by voice, ingre­di­ent lists and step-by-step recipe direc­tions that can be read out loud. It is tied to Coupons.com’s KitchMe.com web appli­ca­tion, which Coupons.com describes as a “next-gen­er­a­tion meal plan­ning and sav­ings web appli­ca­tion” that “unique­ly com­bines recipes, meal plan­ning, sav­ings and shop­ping-list capa­bil­i­ties.”

The post says addi­tion­al fea­tures like the abil­i­ty to take pho­tos of meals and share them with friends were in devel­op­ment and future fea­tures could also include the abil­i­ty to use voice recog­ni­tion to nav­i­gate the app “so that get­ting cook­ing infor­ma­tion hands-free could become a real­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, in a recent email, a Coupons.com rep says there are no new updates planned for the Google Glass app.

And, in August 2013, Fideli­ty Labs, which says it devel­ops “inno­v­a­tive ideas and prod­ucts” for a vari­ety of affil­i­at­ed Fideli­ty Invest­ment com­pa­nies, said it was par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Google ear­ly devel­op­er pro­gram and was work­ing with a pro­to­type of Google Glass to “bet­ter under­stand the tech­nol­o­gy and how it may ben­e­fit our cus­tomers.”

As such, it pro­duced a video show­ing “a day in the life of a Fideli­ty cus­tomer using Google Glass” and invit­ed cus­tomers to sign up for its “first exper­i­ment with Google Glass,” which would allow users to receive, at mar­ket close, quotes from the major index­es.

But despite these efforts, Google Glass’ future remains uncer­tain. Some say it is dead. Oth­ers are a bit more optimistic/diplomatic.

“I think it’s always been the case that Google Glass is a long-term tech­nol­o­gy play,” said Joe Las­z­lo, senior direc­tor of the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Cen­ter of Excel­lence at the IAB. “I think we’re still at the ear­ly days of all wear­ables – look at the excite­ment of Apple Watch and oth­er smart­watch­es and fit­ness devices. There’s not a lot of adop­tion yet and that may be what you’re see­ing around Google Glass in part. Peo­ple who are real­ly ear­ly to embrace it and devel­op apps for it are maybe start­ing to rethink that. But I think any­body who has a real­is­tic time­frame for pace, I don’t think any­body in that camp would have writ­ten it off. They just real­ize it’s a long­time effort.”

In oth­er words, Google Glass isn’t dead – it’s just slow.

“I think it’s inter­est­ing – the oth­er thing you don’t see so much now is neg­a­tive arti­cles and blog posts about peo­ple with Google Glass being obnox­ious and such, which is a sign we’re kind of past the ear­ly gut reac­tion stage, but not to mass adop­tion stage yet. We’re at an inter­im point,” Las­z­lo said. “With most new tech­nol­o­gy, things get qui­et for a while. True believ­ers con­tin­ue to be true believ­ers, but it will take anoth­er year to two years before there’s a deci­sive kind of mar­ket deci­sion about what Google Glass’ future looks like.”

For his part, Ben Reuben­stein, pres­i­dent of cre­ative agency Pos­si­ble Mobile, agrees Google Glass is still a “niche exper­i­ment from Google.”

But, per Reuben­stein, brands can still use Google Glass as a “R&D play­ground” as they “[think] about how heads up dis­plays will become more com­mon­place in the future.”

In addi­tion, like the brands that were ear­ly to roll out Google Glass apps, Reuben­stein notes, “Inno­v­a­tive ideas now will show tech­no­log­i­cal lead­er­ship and offer brands anoth­er way to con­nect with con­sumers through demon­stra­tions.”