What Display Daily thinks: Unless you are building a business model around niche medical or industrial applications of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), or have a gaming company, you might want to sit this one out. There is literally no compelling reason to build a consumer business around headsets or glasses.
Forgetting about historic failures of the past, Google (trillion dollar company) tried it and failed; Meta (trillion dollar company) has been desperately trying and failing; Apple (trillions of dollars company) seems to have a demo but has been trying for years. Don’t shove your products into people’s faces. That’s not a sales tactic. It’s not convenient. It is not common sense.
So, you still like the cool AR/VR technology, and those microdisplays have longer term research value, and you have some IP or some smart people who could do some serious work in the area. Make it a skunkworks project. It’s random, its creative, and it may yield better results than the guys trying to force feed people on the idea of some hellscape in the future where hands-free means head-caged.
In the meantime, enjoy the endless, and pointless hours of debate about this or that technology for near-eye displays. I say pointless because the intention is to always reach some endpoint where you arrive at a consumer device. Pointless. Find solutions to problems, and don’t try and convince yourself that there is a $500 headset or google that will replace monitors or layer Google Maps on your morning walk.
If I were a cynical man, I would say that Apple, avoiding SEC scrutiny, has decided to bankrupt its competition by pretending that there is a spatial computing market and while they all scramble to avoid being left out, losing billions and billions, Apple will just delay and delay a consumer product, bleeding everyone else dry in the process.
AR and VR Displays
At IMID 2023 in Busan, Kang Min-soo, a senior researcher at Omdia, gave a talk on AR and VR display technologies. The gist of the presentation was that Red LEDos would become the dominant display technology beyond 2026. Currently, according to Omdia, OLEDos is the popular choice among manufacturers, in part because of Apple’s new Vision Pro. However, Oledos has limitations when it comes to brightness, making it less suitable for use in outdoor environments. RGB LEDos is exepected to increase from 5.4% market share this year to 76.5% in 2029, and by contrast, OLEDos is expected to decrease from 71.5% to 13.9% in the same time period.
Omdia also noted that the current usage of AR displays is limited to fields like medical and industrial applications, but it predicts that will change in 2024 and 2025, expanding to areas like AIoT (artificial intelligent internet of things) and machine vision.
So, that’s interesting on the surface of things. We all want to know about these very cool display technologies and the challenges of commercializing them. Surely the commercialization of a few inches of displays can lead to bigger, better things?
Hold that thought.
Real Reality Bites Virtual and Augment Reality
Meta is not going to let go and if the company doubles down on its AR/VR bets than we have about a year and a half and $35 billion left on the existing bet. Nevertheless, Meta is preparing to launch the Quest 3, its MR headset, while also refreshing its Ray-Ban smart glasses line.
The updated Ray-Ban glasses, a product of Meta’s collaboration with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, will sport new frame options and a feature to livestream video directly to Facebook and Instagram. According to Lowpass, privacy enhancements are also in the pipeline, addressing concerns with the current model’s LED recording indicator, which some users have tampered with. The upcoming version is designed to deactivate photo and video capabilities if the LED is tampered with. Additionally, improvements to the battery life, camera, and audio features, like adaptive volume control, are expected. The release date remains uncertain, but the company might provide more details at Meta Connect 2023 virtual conference in late September.
Despite the moderate success of the initial Ray-Ban Stories, with only about 10% of the sold units being actively used monthly, Meta continues to invest in the smart glasses sector, viewing it as a pivotal bridge to full-fledged AR wearables. As I said, Meta is doubling down despite fractional use of the devices it is spending billions of dollars on.
Google, another company that seems to like throwing money at things that don’t work, got pummeled by both Business Insider and Ars Technica, the equivalent of a tech bro sandwich, for its AR/VR non-strategy. Ars Technica reported that Google has struggled to find stable footing in the AR/VR space despite investing in it for over a decade. Relying on a Business Insider report on the tech giant’s pattern of shifting priorities and lack of consistent leadership, you get a list of failures of numerous hardware projects, including Google Glass, Cardboard, Daydream, Tango, and Iris. Software ventures like ARCore and Tilt Brush have either been abandoned or gained minimal traction. Google’s leadership in the AR/VR domain has seen upheavals, with significant figures such as Clay Bavor, Google’s Head of AR/VR, exiting the company. The report cites internal sources that suggest a continuous change in strategy and a lack of clear focus. Recent projects like Iris faced indecision on aspects ranging from hardware, like display chips, to design aesthetics such as color choice.
In response to competitors like Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Google is now looking to partner with Samsung and Qualcomm in an AR venture codenamed “Moohan,” set to run on Android. The goal is to introduce an MR headset by summer 2024, but there’s internal skepticism about meeting that target with a compelling product. Although Google has acquired hardware-centric companies like Raxiom and North, the strategy is now veering towards a software-centric approach similar to the Android model. The tech giant also has parallel XR projects: one involving Raxiom and another software initiative called “Betty.” To maintain secrecy and competitive edge, these teams operate in silos, competing for resources, leading to what insiders describe as a bureaucratic tangle.
Still convinced you can come up with a meaningful investment plan in AR/VR R&D? Hold that thought. Please hold that thought.
Apple Can Make Dumb Mistakes, Too
We are living in a hype cycle: AI, AR, VR, IoT, UAV, etc. There is some notion that we are about to make everything virtual and create a tech investor-friendly world in which everyone has to upgrade to a new computing paradigm. Unfortunately, people are far less interesting than that. They need normal stuff, and they have normal emotions. You can’t make them wear headsets unless you enact a law, and that seems possible but very far fetched when it comes to AR/VR.
You have very little in the way of compelling applications or uses for AR/VR beyond specialized verticals. People like to text, watch videos, Facetime, or do games. They are not that complicated. In fact, if they never had to work on a computing device ever again, they would be fine. Yet, Apple is trying to convince the world that it figured out a deep yearning in mankind—particularly the affluent, magical beings that inhabit Apple’s marketing—for helmets, isolation, and claustrophobia.
If you wear prescription glasses, you will get why AR/VR fails. It’s that simple. Maybe Apple is just punking its competitors or hoping that Meta goes broke trying to keep up with some mythical Apple spatial computing world that will never come.
