2021 is a year for significant growth in the augmented reality market. The question remains: will the wearables released this year shift to the consumer market?
The short answer: manufacturers are still deep in the midst of conducting research and devleopment to solve problems surrounding downsizing the wearables for consumer usability. Current wearables are still too bulky, expensive, and hot for mainstream use, lending towards enterprise applications rather than mainstream use.
For now, we predict this year will continue to focus on enterprise markets while hardware development continues. The Harvard Business Review survey highlights 87% of enterprise respondents are currently exploring (67%), or piloting / deploying (20%) mixed reality.
Ahead of CES 2021 Lenovo has announced the ThinkReality A3 AR headset for enterprises. The significant majority of the AR wearable market has been focused on enterprise applications (Think Microsoft Hololens, Google Glass 2, Epson Moverio, and now Lenovo ThinkReality A3). With Lenovo’s new headset, the market is moving towards a slimmer, more compact form, but at the expense of the technology inside of the device.
ThinkReality A3 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 featuring stereoscopic 1080p displays allowing users to view up to five virtual displays. An 8MP RGB camera producing 1080p video on the front of the glasses will be utilized for remote viewing use cases. The other dual cameras will function for room-scale tracking. The ThinkReality A3 will tether to a PC or select smartphones via USB-C cables.
The newest AR headset from Lenovo is significantly lighter and more compact than its predecessor, which is a good sign of movement towards consumer use cases. The issue facing most manufacturers is packing holograms and hand / eye tracking AR technology as seen in the Hololens 2 into a compact consumer device. Facebook has stated that they are the leading investors into augmented reality, yet their recently announced headset does not have any AR functionality, labeled instead as “smart glasses.”
The smart glasses trend hasn’t caught on yet due to the lack of technology advancements in the devices. There is no “wow” factor that provides utility for consumers that other enterprise AR wearable devices provide through virtual displays, holograms, and virtual gestures.
Mark Zuckerburg even spoke in an interview with Marques Brownlee about the pitfalls of Google Glass, comparing them to a “smart watch on your face.” He then goes on to describe his vision for true AR consumer applications, which will involve the holograms and eye/hand tracking technology that’s absent from this initial Facebook headset.
Though we see these capabilities in bulkier enterprise headsets, the technology has not progressed far enough at this point to fit into sleek mainstream compatible glasses.
However, Apple has been long rumored to announce the launch of Apple Glass in 2021, which will hopefully include all these bells and whistles that differentiate “smart glasses” from AR glasses. In order to do this, it is speculated that Apple Glass will offload some of that processing power that makes enterprise facing headsets so bulky into the iPhone, which will then connect to the headset wirelessly. This is an exciting prospect for consumers, but for now, AR is busy solving problems and creating serious ROI in enterprise applications while the hardware catches up.