Apple Working on ‘Wearables’ Smart Glasses

Apple is working on a pair of smart glasses, Bloomberg reports.

The product would be introduced in 2018 at the earliest, according to a Bloomberg source.

The project is advanced enough to be in talks with suppliers, according to the report.

The smart glasses would be Apple's first in a category of product that was originally pioneered by Google, with Google Glass.

Like Google Glass, Apple's smart glasses product would be geared towards information conveyance, instead of immersive augmented reality like the products that Magic Leap is developing and Microsoft Hololens.

The glasses “may use augmented reality,” according to a Bloomberg source.

“AR can be really great, and we have been and continue to invest a lot in this area”Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

Bloomberg reports that Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is under pressure to deliver new products amid slowing sales of the iPhone, which accounts for two-thirds of Apple’s revenue.

In July, he expressed enthusiasm for augmented reality after the rise of Pokemon Go, a location-based game that uses the technology. Augmented Reality or AR, as it’s known, adds images and other digital information to people’s view of the real world, while virtual reality completely surrounds them with a computer-generated environment.

The glasses may be Apple’s first hardware product targeted directly at AR, one of the people said. Cook has beefed up AR capabilities through acquisitions. In 2013, Apple bought PrimeSense, which developed motion-sensing technology in Microsoft Corp.’s Kinect gaming system. Purchases of software startups in the field, Metaio Inc. and Flyby Media Inc., followed in 2015 and 2016.

“AR can be really great, and we have been and continue to invest a lot in this, we are high on AR for the long run. We think there are great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity.” Tim Cook, July 26, 2016

Apple has AR patents for things like street view in mapping apps. It was also awarded patents for smart glasses that make use of full-fledged virtual reality. Apple is unlikely to leverage VR in a mass-consumer product, Cook suggested in October.

The smart glasses will connect to an iPhone for processing. One main component of any pair of Apple smart glasses would be its lenses.

Last week, Upload VR entrepreneur-in-residence Robert Scoble wrote in a Facebook post that Apple's optics partner is Carl Zeiss, which produces a lens called Zeiss Smart Optics.

Source: Bloomberg Technology