Back in January of this year, Bloomberg reported that due to technical challenges, Apple has delayed the production of the much rumoured AR glasses. The nature of said challenges were not revealed, and the delay pointed to an indefinite one. While there are no direct contradictions to the report at the moment, an industry analyst claims that should the project be greenlit again, it still wouldn’t be a thing until “2026 or 2027 at the earliest”.
Ming-Chi Kuo made the prediction in a Medium post, which mainly addresses the adoption of what is described as “metalenses” by Apple. To put it simply, metalenses are lenses with nanostructures within them, which are used to focus light. It’s probably safe to think of these as lenses within lenses. Closer to the present, Kuo predicts that the iPhone maker will probably start using these metalenses by 2024, as the glass that sits atop of the Face ID camera on the iPad Pro. These will alter go to iPhones in 2025 or 2026.
These will, according to Kuo’s Medium post, eventually make their way to the Apple AR glasses. These, as mentioned earlier, will only go into mass production in 2026 or 2027 at the earliest. That’s assuming that the fruit company intends to continue working on it still, instead of focusing its resources on the rumoured “more affordable” MR headset.
All this will probably hinge on the first Apple MR headset doing well in the first place. For now, things look to be pointing at a WWDC unveiling, even if there is some uncertainty surrounding that. And then there’s the rumoured “more affordable” MR headset that will be coming after, with a gap of maybe a year or two based on the prior Bloomberg report. As for WWDC itself, this year’s iteration of the event is currently scheduled to happen on 6 June.
(Source: Ming-Chi Kuo / Medium, Harvard University)
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