According to the latest report, according to former employees involved in the project, Mark Zuckerberg hopes to make Meta’s upcoming AR glasses his ” iPhone moment” to refresh him and the company.
The review is in response to a report by The Verge that outlines Meta’s AR glasses roadmap, which includes launching at least four different versions over the next six years.
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Moreover, Meta’s first-generation AR glasses, dubbed Nazare, will be designed to work independently of smartphones, using a wireless, phone-shaped device that offloads some of the computing needed to operate the glasses.
A feature of the device is the ability for users to communicate and interact with holograms of other people, similar to the fictional scene depicted in a video last October announcing Facebook’s rebranding of the business as Meta.
Furthermore, Meta intends to launch its first-generation AR glasses by 2024, targeting early adopters and developers. That same year, the company also plans to release a pair of cheaper smart glasses, codenamed Hypernova, that will pair with smartphones to display incoming messages and other notifications in the head-up display.
Looking ahead, Meta’s AR roadmap includes a lighter, more advanced version of the Nazare glasses due in 2026, followed by the third version in 2028, according to details shared with The Verge by people familiar with the matter.
If AR glasses are successful, Zuckerberg hopes they will bring new perspectives to Meta and himself, and allow the company he founded to innovate again, which is why “Zuck’s ego is intertwined with the glasses”, the former employee told The Verge.
But Meta will have to contend with Apple, which has its own AR ambitions. Apple is working on at least two AR projects, including an augmented reality headset to be released in late 2022 or 2023, followed by a sleeker pair of augmented reality glasses.
Apple’s AR/VR headset is coming out in 2022, perhaps at the WWDC Worldwide Developers Conference in June, but Apple needs to overcome some development issues. Reliable sources such as analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman say the headset could be released in 2023, while smart glasses in 2024 or 2025.
