Much like how AI has been tacked on to phones and laptops, it’s now making its way into the AR/VR/MR (Augmented, Virtual, Mixed Reality) space.

Despite being repeatedly marketed as the next big thing, immersive technology remains a niche in gaming, training simulations and specialised industries like healthcare and architecture. So far, there is little traction in everyday consumer use. 

We’re still not seeing people stroll through the streets with gadgets glued to their faces — unless, of course, you happen to be in New York or Tokyo. Or if you are a technology journalist or a product reviewer.

Big tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Snap Inc are all working to bring to us a pair of AI-powered smart glasses. Leading the charge is Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

Meta’s latest creation, the Orion — which the company claims is “the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made” — debuted recently. Imagine controlling your screen with the flick of a wrist or a well-timed finger pinch. It sounds like Hollywood science fiction. 

Orion offers AR features like overlaying information — on cafes, streets or buildings you see through your glasses — along with smartphone-like capabilities controlled via eye tracking, gestures and a neural wristband. 

The features seem all too familiar. We have danced this dance before, with Meta Quest 3, Apple Vision Pro, Magic Leap 2 and Google Glass. Anyone remember Google Glass? The grandpa of AR glasses was launched in 2012 amid a lot of excitement, as it was widely touted as mass consumption smart eyewear. 

But Google Glass failed to gain mainstream momentum, largely due to its steep price tag of US$ 1,500 per unit, and privacy concerns. 

Much like Google Glass, Meta's Orion remains a prototype, and isn't yet available for purchase. It’s an iteration for what’s to come — a better version of Orion. But why the hesitance to bring it to the market? The price tag is estimated at around US$ 10,000. That's nearly seven times that of Google Glass.

But has the technology changed much since Google Glass? The Secretariat spoke to Jitesh Ubrani, research manager of Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, at the International Data Corporation (IDC), a technology markets research and consulting firm. 

Ubrani said the new technologies are very different from the past, because users move from computing in 2D to 3D, and are very difficult to produce at scale. “VR, and now MR, has been driven by gaming. As a result, the mass market is yet to adopt it...,” he added.

So, even though a lot has changed in terms of technology, we are witnessing more of the same problems in the immersive space. 

Promising More, Delivering Less

Apart from cost and privacy issues, new challenges have emerged as well, such as short battery life, bulky headsets and poor portability.

Exhibit A: Apple’s Mixed Reality (MR) headset Vision Pro. Known for its innovative products which have a much wider set of uses than your run-of-the-mill gadgets, Apple couldn’t hit the sweet spot with Vision Pro, launched in February this year.

At US$ 3,500 and 600 grams, the Vision Pro isn’t practical for most users. Limited to a few markets, it has struggled to sell 100,000 units per quarter since its February launch, and suffered a 75 per cent drop in US sales in the second quarter, as per IDC.

“Although the Apple Vision was expected to sell 800,000 units in 2024, the figure has been slashed by half, to 400,000-450,000,” said EDIIIE, a Gurugram-based AR/VR company.

Other prominent companies like Sony, Microsoft, Snap Inc., HTC and Magic Leap, which have dabbled in the AR/VR space, started with grand ambitions, but struggled to achieve commercial success.

Even Meta, when it launched Quest Pro in 2022 at US$ 1,500, couldn’t sell it to the public, figuratively and metaphorically. Magic Leap’s Magic Leap One, launched in 2018, failed due to overhyped promises, limited software and a US$ 2,300 price tag. Same was the case with Microsoft’s HoloLens, which didn’t make its mark due to the exorbitant cost of US$ 3,500.

Snap Inc. came out with several versions of its AR offering, Spectacles, but it remained a niche product — more of a marketing experiment than a serious consumer device. Sony’s PlayStation VR headsets have seen some success, but face stiff competition with Meta’s Quest series.

“Today’s tech simply cannot be optimised to solve all these demands. For example, if you want lots of brightness to use an AR screen outdoors, you have to make the glasses very big and bulky, with a projector that consumes lots of power. But then, consumers don’t like the design,” said Ubrani.

Most companies are now pivoting to enterprise markets or making improvements, hoping to eventually find a broader audience.

Another reason for dipping sales is that developers aren't leaping to build apps for devices like Apple Vision Pro, because they don't think many people are using it. Same has been the case for Sony’s PlayStation VR2, launched last year. In fact, many have regretted buying it because the games weren’t “compelling enough” for the user to keep coming back.

The Privacy Issue

One cannot help but raise a proverbial eyebrow at the privacy concerns surrounding the immersive industry. These technologies may engage in an indiscriminate collection of data — anything from biometric prints to a user’s precise location — often without full consent. 

Imagine a user donning a VR headset and roaming around the streets of Mumbai, without realising that their every movement, every fleeting glance, is being meticulously catalogued by the creator of the headset, to be sold to advertisers.

One scary example of this came to the fore when two Harvard students repurposed Meta’s Ray-Ban AR glasses — currently available online for US$ 299 — as a tool for facial recognition, capable of identifying individuals and extracting personal information such as addresses and phone numbers from the internet.

With VR-based hardware, one look in the wrong direction could mean that the headset opens up even your bank account details, particularly in public or shared environments, where others could easily "see" the information.

And herein lies the rub: Do we really need AI-powered AR/VR/MR glasses? Are they practical for everyday use? Most importantly, is there a market for such a product? The answer has multiple layers. 

This is the first of a two-part series exploring whether AI-powered glasses can push AR/VR/MR beyond niche markets.