After 10 years of development and billions of dollars, meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September pulled the curtain on one of the company’s most ambitious projects, an augmented reality prototype called Orion. 1 week ago snap CEO Evan Spiegel took to the stage at the annual Snap Partner Summit to introduce the 5th generation of AR-enabled Spectacles. Both companies see great potential in this technology, with a grand vision for AR glasses to usurp smartphones as the next generation of computing.
“This is a huge advancement for technology,” Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an exclusive interview. “This is a huge step forward in our kind of goal of helping define the next generation of computing.”
The dream of augmented reality and mixed reality is something tech giants have been chasing for years.
Earlier this year, Apple began selling the Vision Pro virtual reality headset for $3,500. More than a decade ago, Google first brought Google Glass to market in 2013 as an early attempt at an AR device, but the product faced challenges and was ultimately canceled. Microsoft has also been investing in AR technology for over a decade, launching the enterprise HoloLens headset in 2016. HoloLens failed to gain traction and was discontinued in October.
“We’re in adolescence,” says Gartner director analyst Tuong Nguyen. “We see a lot of potential, but we haven’t quite reached that potential yet.”
Snap and Meta have debuted AR prototypes, but it will still be years before they can sell these devices to consumers. This technology is too expensive to mass produce. For now, Meta plans to use Orion as a developer device for its employees.
“We’re going to use this primarily internally to build the software we need,” Zuckerberg said at the Meta Connect conference in September. “We will also work with a small number of external partners to ensure content diversity.”
Snap is similarly investing in building out its ecosystem, with plans to rent AR glasses to developers who commit to paying Spectacles $99 a month for a year.
“We’ve really tried to lower the barriers for people to start using this new technology,” Spiegel told Boorstin. “We are at a unique time where both consumers and developers are ready for something new.”
Watch CNBC’s Julia Boorstin try out Meta and Snap augmented reality glasses and explore the future of this cutting-edge technology.
