This month holds a great significance as the two longtime rivals in social media will face off with major demonstrations of what they think will eventually be the next major computing platform, yes we are talking about AR glasses.
Meta & Snap Launching Their AR Glasses
It is expected that the first big reveal will come from Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who is set to unveil the fifth generation of Spectacles on September 17th at his annual Partner Summit in Los Angeles, as per the sources.
Interestingly, just after a week on September 25th, Mark Zuckerberg is slated to debut Meta’s first AR glasses, codenamed Orion, at his Connect conference in Menlo Park.
Here it would be very interesting to see as both the Meta and Snap have pursued different paths in developing AR glasses, still they are grappling with the same challenge.
We are talking about the technology as it still isn’t ready for mainstream adoption.
As a result, neither company intends to sell the glasses they’ll showcase this month, according to insiders.
It appears that Snap is planning to repeat its 2021 strategy which is distributing this upgraded Spectacles model to select developers and partners.
For doing so, the California based technology company is reportedly producing fewer than 10,000 units, while Meta is manufacturing even fewer of its Orion glasses.
Earlier at the start of July this year, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, spoke to a YouTube content creator to reveal many details of the firm’s roadmap from AI to XR, giving a window into what Meta may have planned for its upcoming showcase event.
In that conversation, Zuckerberg spoke about the lessons Meta learned during the Ray-Ban partnership, the future of smartphones, neural interface wristbands, and powerful new AR glasses.
Meta Reaching For Smart Glasses Success
It appears that the development and ubiquity of smart glasses are not based on an overnight tipping point.
In contrast, this journey appears to be slow, with XR technology and its leaders needing to jump through a series of hoops to communicate the effectiveness and necessity of XR to businesses and consumers.
During this conversation, Zuckerberg noted that the XR industry needs to reach the point where it can efficiently distribute “full holographic AR” solutions before AR can become “the main platform that people would use.”
Further, the Meta CEO went on to explain that the Ray-Ban Meta product portfolio came from a goal of taking “the best form factor for [smart]glasses today” and seeing how much technology Meta could “pack in there without compromising the form factor.”
Moving ahead he noted that “AI has made such big leaps,” which should soon lead to a “simpler product” that has increased appeal.
