There are always people who say that "fashion is a reincarnation", in a sense, this sentence is also applicable to the technology circle. AR is a typical example of this: Products such as Google Glass were once stunning, but soon people found that the cool features in the promotional film were largely "false propaganda", and the AR boom was disillusioned with people's visions of the future.
However, after years of silence, AR is now making a big comeback. According to statistics, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the total financing of startups in the AR/VR industry reached 12 billion, more than the previous two years combined.
After entering 2022, large enterprises have also accelerated their layout in the AR field: Ali has invested 380 million yuan in AR glasses manufacturer Nreal, TCL Thunderbird released its latest AR glasses products, Huawei has disclosed the latest AR patents, and even Google, which has suffered a big loss in the AR field, plans to make a comeback and acquire Micro LED startup Raxium for $1 billion to provide display modules for its new AR headset. Not to forget that Apple, which has added AR functions to mobile phones and tablets, although they have no intention of launching professional AR devices, their enthusiasm is not lower than other manufacturers.
It is particularly noteworthy that whether it is a giant or a new sharp, the AR products that have recently appeared in the concentrated group are not limited to B-end fields such as medical care and education, but have launched an impact on the vast C-end market.
Since we have to face the consumer market, we must answer one of the most intuitive questions: What different experience can AR bring?
If VR is a complete virtual world, then AR is the middle ground between the virtual world and the real world, and its biggest advantage is that it can interact with the virtual world's objects and the real world environment.
A very typical application scenario is e-commerce, in general, before purchasing large goods, you need to measure the size, but the error is always difficult to avoid. To this end, some merchants have launched AR model services, users can intuitively understand the final effect of product placement, but also in advance to design a better placement plan.
Another typical application scenario is games. Pokémon GO is a typical example of being able to catch a Pikachu that you saw on TV since childhood on your doorstep, which must be the dream of countless game and animation enthusiasts.
In addition, in the consumption of video content, AR glasses also have their own unique advantages. Compared with all kinds of display devices in front of them, AR glasses closer to the glasses can bring a larger picture and a stronger sense of immersion; compared with the VR headset of the same immersive device, THE AR glasses are smaller in size and more flexible in use.
Some people may think that the above functions have been realized on mobile phones and VR glasses, and AR glasses are somewhat redundant. It is true that these functions already exist on other devices, but AR has a stronger sense of substitution than mobile phones and computers, and is more flexible than VR. That is to say, the role of AR is to make the "usable" experience evolve to "easy to use", this meaning is by no means "redundant" or "chicken ribs", otherwise most of today's technology products may not have the need to iterate.
The real embarrassment of AR is that its current features, whether it's navigation, model placement or gameplay, don't seem to have actually matched the refreshing promos of 10 years ago. If so, why do the giants choose to make another effort now?
On the one hand, it is because the development of network communication technology has paved the way for AR. Some communication technology experts said that the reason for the previous development of AR glasses is that the application scope and scenarios are limited and the price is difficult for most consumers to bear, so if you want to break through the bottleneck, it is not enough to rely on the development of the AR field itself.
In the past two years, with the popularity of 5G networks, the network transmission rate has gone up a step, which has allowed the real-time video display of AR glasses, multi-sensor fusion and other capabilities to evolve, on the one hand, to improve the use experience, but also to lay the foundation for the emergence of more functions.
The deep reason why large enterprises concentrate on AR is that they all have the desire to preemptively lay out the ecology.
On the power of ecology, the most intuitive example in recent years is wireless headphones, smart watches and other wearable devices, and its shipments in 2021 have reached 533.6 million units. Among them, Apple is the absolute king, accounting for 30% of the market share, and the shipment volume is higher than the shipment volume behind it than xiaomi, Samsung, and Huawei combined.
Looking back at Apple's success in the wearables field, we have to mention the AirPods in 2016. The achievements of this headset do not need to be repeated, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has single-handedly changed the headphone habits of countless people. More critically, it can move freely between Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, Mac and other devices, thus taking Apple's ecological experience to a higher level.
AirPods isn't the first Bluetooth headset, but why has it become the market leader driving the category to dominate?
To answer this question, think back to the Bluetooth headphones before the AirPods: they are bulky, and their volume is even shameful to watch even the sony noise-canceling beans that are known for their large size; they have poor flexibility, many of them are made into a headset for larger battery capacity, and they cannot be charged at any time when they are out; they have low bandwidth, so even the requirements of listening to music are difficult to meet, and can only be used for calls.
AirPods solve these pain points: in terms of volume, it is no different from Apple's previously random EarPods; in terms of flexibility, Apple has improved its endurance by several times through the design of the charging case; in terms of sound quality, although it is often said to be "boiled water", stable calls, music quality and almost insensitive delay still make it the ultimate convenience. The success of AirPods, in addition to Apple's own technical strength, is also inseparable from the development of the general environment.
In 2010, the Bluetooth 4.0 technical specification was released, which has one more important feature than before: power saving. In 2013, Bluetooth 4.1 was released, and on top of 4.0, it provides greater flexibility and control, supports multi-device connectivity, and allows manufacturers to set up device connections to more intelligently control device power. The release of the 4.1 specification has given Bluetooth technology the potential to become the core driving force for the development of the Internet of Things, and Apple is the first to stimulate this potential.
Doesn't all this seem familiar? The dilemma faced by AR is highly similar to that of Bluetooth headsets of that year: large size, poor flexibility, low practicality, and small application range. Look at the development of the times: the emergence of mini LED, Micro LED and other display technologies, the network transmission rate brought by 5G technology has taken off, and their revolution is not inferior to Bluetooth 4.0 and 4.1.
Since the external environment has developed enough, we also have reason to infer that AR devices will usher in revolutionary products in the past two years. Whether it is Apple Google or Xiaomi Huawei, they definitely hope that they can become the leader of the new era, so it is natural for the AR track to enter the explosive period.
Apple has built a complete ecology by relying on wearable devices, attracted countless "family barrel" users for itself, and leveraged a market of hundreds of billions of levels. According to the Forecast of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in 2024, the industry scale of AR will reach 240 billion yuan, which is still somewhat conservative considering its subversiveness of existing devices such as mobile phones and tablets.
In the face of such a huge potential market, the manufacturers who have been grabbed by Apple once in a time will naturally not be willing to succumb to the people again, and Apple will naturally not stop moving forward. The giants' horse racing against AR has just begun.