Apple of the eye

As tech giant gets ready to launch new iphone, it snaps up augmented reality glasses firm

APPLE has snapped up a company developing augmented reality glasses, as it intensifies its effort to find the next big knockout product to rival the smartphone.

The technology firm, which will unveil its latest range of iphones on Sept 12, yesterday confirmed it had bought Colorado-based Akonia Holographics. It declined, however, to give further detail on the purchase, saying: “Apple buys smaller companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans.”

Augmented reality differs from virtual reality in that it overlays digital content onto the real world, instead of immersing a user in a “virtual” environment. It is an area a number of the US tech giants are investing in.

Microsoft has already launched its Hololens headsets, while Amazon is also said to be looking into how it could use the technology. Apple last year rolled out augmented reality applications for its devices.

Chief executive Tim Cook signalled this would be a focus for the Silicon Valley giant going forward, saying augmented reality was a “big and profound” technology development. “This is one of those huge things that we’ll look back at and marvel on the start of it,” Mr Cook told an investor call. Bloomberg last year, reported Apple was preparing to roll out an augmented reality device as soon as 2020.

Akonia, which was founded in 2012, creates displays for augmented reality glasses, and claims its technology allows “thin, transparent smart glass lenses that display vibrant, full-colour, wide field-of-view images”. In buying the business, Apple will be able to overcome a major hurdle faced by those developing AR devices: how to make the technology light and thin enough to fit inside regular glasses frames, and easy to mass produce.

Google’s efforts to roll out its Glass devices, in 2013, were hampered by the clunky design, as well as the high price. Early adopters were branded “Glassholes” when they ventured out in public. The £1,000 prototype was quickly shelved after being described as the “worst product of all time”.

Whether fairly or not, “smart glasses” have faced ridicule ever since. But investors and tech giants are pouring money into augmented reality and virtual reality technology, betting that devices including headsets and glasses, could eventually tempt customers to trade in their smartphones.

Venture capitalists invested some $3bn (£2.3bn) into AR and VR start-ups last year. Half of that was in the last three months of the year, landing startups with eye-watering valuations, such as Florida-based Magic Leap which raised $2.3bn before releasing any products. Meanwhile, the FANGS – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet’s Google – have been running their own projects: Facebook launched its Oculus Go virtual reality headset in May, while Apple and Google have both rolled out augmented reality platforms for developers to create AR apps.

Although Apple is also involved in other projects, it is clear Mr Cook is pinning a lot on AR, as investors’ concerns that phone ownership could be reaching saturation point grow. Wearables aren’t the easiest sell at the moment, but it may not be too long before the streets are filled with “Glassholes”.