Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg views AR and VR as the next platform after the smartphone, saying it will define the 2030s in his annual goal-settingletter, posted to his profile page last Thursday night.
Business Insider Intelligence
In his letter, Zuckerberg framed Facebook's focus on AR as a bid to create a tech tool for social good, underpinned by Facebook's edict toconnect people: By enabling people to be "present" anywhere, AR glasses woud provide access and social mobility regardless of a user's location.
Developing its own AR glasses also marks the social giant's latest hardware effort: Last year, Facebook advanced further into hardware, expanding its Portal screened smart speaker (Portal, Portal+, and Portal TV) and Oculus VR headset lineups (Rift, Quest, and Go).
Facebook expects that AR will eventually reach mass consumer adoption on par with mobile today and it appears the tech giant wants to lead that race.In the letter, Zuckerberg predicted that "at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology."
To that end, Facebook is hoping to make that breakthrough itself: The company is reportedly developing its own AR glasses, which could launch between 2023 and 2025,percomments by Facebook's head of AR and VR Andrew Bosworth last fall. To aid the effort, Facebook has reportedly partnered with Luxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban and Oakley, to develop AR-enabled glasses, a project internally codenamed Orion by Facebook Reality Labs, the team tasked with developing the glasses,perCNBC.
Facebook is also reportedly building its own operating system that it would likely integrate into its hardware, as it looks to wean off of its current reliance on Google's Android as it anticipates greater platform-device rivalries,perThe Information.
Developing its own AR glasses within the next three to five years would predate the expectations of Facebook chief scientist Michael Abrash, who leads Facebook Reality Labs and believes it will take five to 10 years before the AR glasses are ready for the masses though that likely won't prevent Facebook from rolling out its first generation hardware ahead of those expectations,perThe Information.
Facebook's AR hardware push will likely aim to differentiate and scale by integrating the company's communications functionality, including its social apps and services, directly into the glasses.Among the most commonly cited barriers to broader adoption of AR and VR headsets currently include a clunky user experience and lack of content or categories beyond specialized use cases, such as gaming,perPerkins Coie.
Facebook imagines that AR glasses will not only become as ubiquitous as smartphones, but that they will effectively replace them in terms of function. To that end, Facebook is likely to focus entirely on the devices' utility as a communication tool, one that can meet all the same needs as the smartphone currently does, but even more powerfully and efficiently.
By developing its own AR glasses as well as the operating system to run on it, Facebook stands to be able to easily put its services onto the devices, reimagine social sharing and advertising formats for the devices, and collect fees for any apps or services that want to gain a position on the device, in the same way that Apple (App Store), Google (Play Store), and Amazon (Fire TV, Amazon Channels) currently do. For example, the glasses wouldreportedlyallow users to make calls, share information, and live-stream their point of view on social media.
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Zuckerberg outlines Facebook's augmented reality ambitions - Business Insider Nordic
