New computer glasses: Apple goes to the metaverse

fParent company Acebook Meta has been describing the so-called Metaverse as a central part of its strategy for some time now. CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls it the “Next Generation Internet.” Metaversum refers to a digital space for living and working, in which users can, so to speak, immerse themselves in the Internet. For this, technologies related to virtual reality and augmented reality are used. Meta has been selling virtual reality glasses for several years now. However, it has been a loss-making business so far, and volumes could be managed.

But now the market may be on the move, Meta could face some serious competition: according to persistent media reports, Apple’s electronics group wanted to unveil its first computer glasses at its annual software developer conference on Monday. Observers say they should look like high-tech ski goggles and could be the most important new hardware product for the company since it introduced its digital Apple Watch in 2015. It should support both VR and AR applications, which is called “Mixed Reality” in the industry. This means that it can represent a fully virtual world (VR) as well as enrich the representation of the real world with digital elements (AR).

The glasses probably won’t be cheap, with reports suggesting Apple was targeting a $3,000 price tag. That would be way above the amounts Meta charges for their devices. A few days ago, the internet company slashed the US starting price of its cheapest Quest 2 glasses by $100-$300, while announcing the next generation Quest 3 for the fall, which should cost $500. Last fall, he released a premium Quest Pro model that started at $1,500 but is now available for $1,000.

Meta still leads the market

Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly said in the past that he sees augmented reality as a promising market. His company has allegedly been working on the glasses for seven years, and the project has been delayed several times. In terms of sales numbers, Apple clearly did not overestimate expectations, at least initially, and even adjusted them downwards. According to Bloomberg, the group originally expected to sell three million points in its first year, but is now said to be 900,000. However, a significantly higher number is expected in the long term. The Apple Watch is said to have sold about 10 million copies in its first year.

Apple’s offensive comes at a time when the hype around the metaverse has cooled somewhat. As a hot topic, the metaverse is now clearly being overshadowed by artificial intelligence (AI), and the success of the ChatGPT language model has sparked an arms race with AI initiatives in the tech industry. Presenting quarterly numbers, Mark Zuckerberg recently found it necessary to stick to his metaverse strategy beyond his AI projects. A “narrative” has evolved that the meta is moving away from the metaverse, but that’s not the case. Apple, in turn, is likely to promote its activities differently than Meta. Head of marketing Greg Joswiak recently said he would never use the term “metaverse”.

The tech industry has been working on digital glasses for years, but there hasn’t been a big breakthrough yet. A famous example of failure is the Google Glass smart glasses released in 2013. This excited some technology enthusiasts, but also caused a lot of controversy and was never widely sold. A few years later, Google stopped selling to end users, then initially limited the business to apps for companies, but now wants to stop doing that entirely. So far, virtual reality glasses such as Quest have been mainly used for video games. Meta has attempted to position the premium Quest Pro as a business device, but since a dramatic drop in prices over a short period of time suggests a dramatic drop in prices, sales appear to be limited.

About 8.8 million virtual or augmented reality glasses were sold worldwide in 2022, according to the IDC research group. That’s a drop of more than 20 percent from the previous year, when the business and the video game industry as a whole benefited from the coronavirus pandemic. This year, however, IDC expects a 14 percent growth to over 10 million pairs, with over 30 million points by 2027.

So far, Meta has been the clear market leader and, according to IDC, recently had a nearly 80 percent share. But the business is still making big losses. Meta Reality Labs, which houses Metaverse-related activities, posted an operating loss of nearly $4 billion on revenue of $339 million in the first quarter.

Source: Frantfurter Allgemeine

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