What They Say
The Wall St Journal had a round-up of recent announcements including a useful forecast for AR headsets from IDC. We recreated the chart from the data.
One of the bits of news in an increasing level of activity was news from Niantic (the developers of Pokémon Go) which is developing a headset with Qualcomm and teased with an image of the headset last week, although no details were released so it could be just an audio device.
What We Think
This is useful data from IDC. Of course, we’re in the realm of speculation, but it would explain the level of activity that is starting to happen in AR. The strong bias to commercial sales is not suprising. Commercial customers will adopt technology even when it is high-priced, has some ergonomic disadvantages or needs effort to integrate and turn into something useful, as long as there is a good economic or other (e.g. safety) reason. A/R glasses are still going to be compromised as consumer devices for some years, even if that is only by price. (BR)
Data IDC (via WSJ). Image:Meko
Niantic’s teaser image
