Augmented Reality

“Augmented Reality” – a cartoon that illustrates we might finally be delivering on the hype of Augmented Reality (AR) with the arrival of Meta’s Orion glasses.

AR is probably one of the most over-hyped categories in consumer tech with a rich history of failures, from Google Glass to the billions burnt by Magic Leap.

Gartner was predicting that by 2020, 100M consumers will shop in AR online and in-store, which seems laughable today.

However, with the launch of Meta’s Orion glasses, we might be getting closer due to the significant improvement in form factor.

The glasses themselves look something your achingly cool art teacher would wear – they are black and thick framed and connect to a gesture control wristband that lets you click different apps like chess that appear as digital graphics overlaid onto the real world.

“What was really striking to me about these was that they were incredibly lightweight,” CNBC senior media and tech correspondent Julia Boorstin remarked.

While Scott Stein of CNET, said, “The glasses definitely do not look like everyday things, but they at least approach something you might see someone wearing around.”

Other technology correspondents that saw the Meta demo noted that “its transparent lenses allow users to maintain natural eye contact and interact seamlessly with those around them—something that traditional AR and mixed reality (MR) headsets, including Apple’s Vision Pro, struggle to achieve.”

While we are seeing improvements in form factor, price also seems to be a major challenge, with the current production cost for each glasses at $10K. The question is how much is Meta willing to subsidize the chance for it to create the new generation interface device for AI and other next generation consumer experiences.

It is worth remembering Google signed revenue share agreements with mobile operators at the launch of the smartphone industry and in 2022 alone it paid Apple $20BN to be the default search engine in the Safari browser.

“Very shortsighted. Orion’s cost is meaningless because that device will never reach mass adoption. Google glass was NOT AR in any way, it was a heads-up display, and if I recall Google did not hype it as AR.
Magic leap was a business failure but also a great step forward in AR glasses evolution and contributed to pushing others in the process of leapfrog development.
Apple and Meta see the end goal even with major roadblocks and pitfalls along the way and that is why they will spend billions to see it through. AR glasses, when they reach the point of full functionality, battery life and form factor, will usher in a new cultural transformation.”

Howard McCabe

Building Brand & Enterprise AR/VR Applications Since 2009

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