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The big Apple news this week has less to do with what it’s done — which is a lot, based on the company’s record-breaking revenue — than what it’s planning next.
After reporting fiscal first-quarter 2022 revenue approaching $124 billion, the famously tight-lipped tech maker fielded a question about its role in the metaverse. The inquiry was natural, given the years-long anticipation of an Apple-branded augmented reality headset or glasses, as well as more recent expectations that a face-worn device could come as early as this year.
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The real surprise was that Apple answered.
“Right now, we have over 14,000 AR kit apps in the App Store, which provide incredible AR experiences for millions of people today,’ said chief executive officer Tim Cook. “And so we see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.”
The company almost always declines to offer comments, even vague ones, about rumors, speculation or future plans. However, Cook has touted augmented reality as the future of spatial computing as far back as 2016. Now, as the metaverse proposition reaches a fever pitch, it’s almost impossible for him to avoid the topic.
The concept envisions the next-generation internet as a visual and immersive environment accessed through virtual reality and AR. The framework puts all eyes on giants like Facebook’s Meta and Apple — not just to produce the devices and platforms for it, but familiarize consumers with the tech and popularize it.
The social media platform has been taking significant steps to realign itself as a metaverse company. It brought its Oculus VR group under the Meta umbrella and just rebranded its flagship Oculus Quest 2 headset as the Meta Quest. This move followed its September launch of Ray-ban smart glasses in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, and made it clear this was a precursor to an upcoming release of AR glasses.
It’s not remotely clear if people are ready for that. An Apple-branded pair of AR glasses, however, could be a different story. The company has a track record of success in popularizing technologies.
Take the iPhone, for instance. Smartphones existed before the Apple handset arrived in 2007, which was basically a glorified mobile browser then. But that was enough to trigger lines around the block, as everyone simply had to have one, signaling the beginning of the end for Blackberry’s dominance. More recently, its market-leading Apple Watch has been arguably buoying the wearables market, even after many in the tech media proclaimed that smartwatches were dead.