When Could Smartglasses Rival the Smartphone?
2024 has been a landmark year for XR, with big tech companies showing they are gearing up for AR smartglasses to be a class of computing to rival the smartphone soon. Meta's Project Orion demonstrator showed the social media juggernaut's vision for the future of augmented reality, including innovative new silicon carbide optics. The commercial release of Apple's Vision Pro may not have been aimed at the mass market, but seems clearly aimed at laying the groundwork for its XR ecosystem. Smaller players have also demonstrated the potential for AR smartglasses to be near-indistinguishable from non-smart glasses, like Vuzix with its Z100 spectacles.
However, many hurdles remain keeping AR glasses off the faces of most of the public, and despite these exciting developments, it is clear that smartglasses are a way off from rivalling the smartphone. Some problems, like input methods, look close to solution, whereas others, particularly display systems and optics, have a way to go yet.
In this webinar, IDTechEx Senior Technology Analyst Sam Dale will outline:
- What the state of XR in 2024 tells us about its potential in the next five years, including the impact of major events in the industry this last twelve months
- How intuitive interfaces for AR are finally emerging, including the impact of eye tracking and Meta's EMG wristband demonstrator
- How the technological status of AR waveguides and displays could develop to solve key challenges with performance and cost
- A potential timeline for AR glasses to begin supplanting the smartphone
IDTechEx's wide engagement with innovators across the XR industry and its extensive back catalog of extended reality research equip it well to assess the evolution of this technological landscape. This webinar will be informed by IDTechEx's extensive portfolio of XR research, which covers topics including optics, displays and the whole XR device ecosystem. All reports provide in-depth assessment of these industries, providing comprehensive technology benchmarking, highly granular technology adoption forecasting, and multiple interview-based company profiles from key industry players.
