Bottom-up versus top-down 🕶.
Right now, there is no dominant augmented reality device. The most successful augmented reality device is the Microsoft Hololens. It’s $3000 and is pretty much just used by extremely early adopters and developers. You’re very unlikely to see someone wearing it while walking down the street.
Interestingly, the products getting the most attention in the AR/VR space are devices like the Vive and Oculus Rift. They are bulky, heavy, tethered devices that completely obscure your vision.
The vast investment into this space suggests that the Rift and Vive will keep on getting cheaper, smaller and lighter until they look and feel like regular glasses.
That theory seems pretty odd in my opinion. I think a company can easily come in and dominate by creating light-AR glasses.
Glasses that look regular with no camera, that are simply a stand-in for your smart watch. The glasses just display your notifications, nothing else.
If a company could make fashionable light-AR glasses like this, they could have wide consumer adoption. That would fund the work required to make a battery efficient camera that could be added to create true AR functionality.
I don’t think we will get to true AR functionality on regular glasses without the light-AR glasses step. It seems like someone could release that now. I’m surprised nobody has.