Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In 2015, rumors of Apple's AR / VR headset project were rampant, and it was widely believed that Apple's entry would directly "fly" the entire industry and detonate the consumer market.

Seven years later, all kinds of spies and predictions about Apple's AR still emerge one after another, and even after this year's Apple Global developer Conference, Cook almost made it clear that Apple AR devices exist, saying that "the AR field is the focus of our daily attention."

Recently, there has been more news about Apple's AR. According to Bloomberg, a shell company called "Deep Dive LLC" is registering the "xrOS" trademark, and Apple has decided to rename the AR / VR header system from the planned "RealityOS" or "rOS" to "xrOS". It is also reported that Apple is currently developing at least three AR / VR head display products, and is expected to release its first product, "Apple Reality Pro", next year.

But no matter what the news says, there is no denying that we still haven't seen the real Apple AR glasses.

In the first wave of AR / VR seven or eight years ago, Apple remained silent. This time, can troubled Apple bring an eye-catching impact on innovation? Unlike the heyday of the function machine before the release of the iPhone, there is no enemy in front of the AR, and what is the definite direction in the unknown fog?

1. How is the hardware terminal going? Before Apple played its cards, many hardware players had come up with their own works. This year, Chinese manufacturers alone have released more than 10 new AR devices.

At present, the more competitive AR hardware players can be divided into three categories: Internet technology companies, AR start-ups and traditional hardware manufacturers.

In terms of big factories, the layout of the five American giants MAMAA is earlier and wider. Apart from Apple, which frequently skips tickets, Meta released smart glasses last year, while Microsoft has already opened up in the industry with HoloLens. Google has not given up the AR glasses project since the failure of Google Glass. While continuing its own research, it has invested in AR start-ups such as North and Magic Leap. Amazon doesn't have a giant to develop its own AR terminal action (Echo Frames belongs to audio glasses, not AR), but it also has a layout on AR-this year, Amazon partnered with Mojo Vision, the developer of the world's first AR smart contact lens Mojo Lens, to develop a consumer app called Alexa Shopping list.

Snap is one of the most aggressive manufacturers in the layout of AR devices in recent years. In 2020, Snap acquired DAQRI, a maker of AR glasses. In 2021, Snap unveiled a new generation of AR glasses Spectacles at the third Annual partner Summit. In March this year, Snap topped the list of the 2022 most innovative VR / AR companies published by Fast Company, a well-known American business magazine.

The actions of Spectacles Internet technology companies in the AR field are still in the stage of exploration and layout. By contrast, AR startups with less resources and funds have taken the responsibility of the education market. In the second half of 2022, especially between August and November, a number of AR manufacturers launched AR terminal products one after another.

In September, the Magic Leap 2, an enterprise-built MR, went on sale, starting at $3299. This is the first time that Magic Leap has updated its product since it launched Magic Leap one in 2018. It is about 20% lighter, 50% smaller, has a wider perspective and a higher price than its predecessor.

Last October, Magic Leap announced on its website that it had completed a new round of financing of $500m, valuing it at about $2 billion-a valuation similar to that of seven years ago. At one point in 2019, Magic Leap was valued at $6.7 billion. But the subsequent layoffs and the departure of the founder made it difficult for Magic Leap. Former Microsoft VP Peggy Johnson took over to drive the transformation of products from a consumer market to an enterprise market.

However, in the 11 years since its establishment, Magic Leap has gathered and exported a large number of AR R & D technical personnel, and Nreal founder Xu Chi is one of them. From apprenticeship to competitor, Mr Xu's Nreal has not lagged behind: Nreal accounted for 75 per cent of the global consumer AR market in 2021, rising to 81 per cent in the first half of 2022, according to Strategy Analytics.

We turn our attention to China, unlike foreign big companies carrying the banner, the domestic AR hardware angular force field and there is no BAT figure. Data from Analysys show that domestic consumer-grade AR glasses sold tens of thousands of units in the third quarter, with Nreal, Thunderbird Innovation, Rokid, Xiaomijia and INMO in the top five.

Just a month before the Magic Leap 2 went on sale, Nreal released XR glasses Nreal Air and Nreal X.

Nreal Air for the consumer market, focusing on lightweight and comfortable, can achieve 130inch aerial screen and 201inch AR sharp color ceiling, need to connect with mobile phones, tablets, notebooks, handsets, game consoles and other devices. Nreal Air, which locates the fashion trend, has an initial price of 2299 yuan, hoping to become a new choice for young people to watch movies.

Nreal X is for the enterprise market, and the weight of the whole machine is heavier than that of Air. Officials claim that it is superior to the high-cost enterprise AR in terms of accuracy and stability, with full-dimensional spatial perception, and the price is 4299 yuan.

At present, under the background of immature hardware technology and lack of content, many manufacturers recognize that the landing plan is to start from the entertainment scene to popularize AR products to educate consumers. However, the challenge in this respect is that at present, consumers' requirements for entertainment video and audio experience are more flexible, and AR is not the best choice for indoor home entertainment scenes, and if it is a mobile scene, experiencing the ultimate viewing effect will challenge the ability of the device to last.

NrealRokid also chose a marketing strategy similar to that of Nreal. In September last year, Rokid released the consumer-grade AR smart glasses Rokid Air, which sells for 2999 yuan, which also sells for "mobile computer screen glasses" and "portable giant screen". In October this year, Rokid released the "Star Station" Rokid Station, which is used to replace mobile phones as a terminal device to provide computing power for Rokid Air glasses.

The product uses a combination of "glasses + Station", derived from the AR route set by Rokid: portable AR glasses provide display power, external host or cloud computing provides computing power. Zhu Mingming, founder of Rokid, said in an interview: "AR will always emphasize wearability and portability, and it is becoming more and more like ordinary glasses, so he must not count and stack sensors, but try his best to cooperate with the surrounding computing power to ensure expressive force and comfort at the same time. So its shape may not be an all-in-one machine, may be a split machine, or even cloud computing."

The idea of an all-in-one machine is not yet mature, and the idea of a split machine is also being tried. The only sure starting point is "display". At present, manufacturers focus on the function of AR glasses. For example, AR+AI enterprise service provider Liangxiang released the AR subtitle glasses "listener" with a price of 3999 yuan in September this year, which provides functions such as real-time subtitle display and language translation. It can be said that AR subtitle glasses can not provide a narrow sense of AR ecology, only for people with hearing impairment, conference scenes and other specific functions. Similar landing ideas are image glasses, such as Xiaomi's Mi glasses camera, and Ray-Ban Stories, a joint venture between Meta and Ray-Ban.

The reason why subtitle glasses and image glasses are included in the broad sense of AR devices, but not Amazon's Echo Frames and Huawei's and Bose's intelligent audio glasses are counted as AR devices, because according to the concept of AR (Augmented Reality) augmented reality, AR glasses should provide the basic function of visual interaction between virtual and real, so glasses that do not have the display function are not on our watch list for AR smart devices.

In fact, the display function of Mijia glasses camera is not limited to watching movies and giant screens, and there are also many intelligent glasses display functions that can be used in daily scenes.

Movie Technology, for example, positioned INMO Air 2, which was released in October this year, as a "lifestyle product", playing a role in making up for mobile phones and computers in some scenes.

INMO Air2, which costs 3699 yuan, offers options such as office scenes and commuting scenes. In office scenes, INMO Air2 can achieve simultaneous interpretation, subtitle headlines, AR online meetings, processing documents, notifications and reply to e-mails and other functions. In commuter scenarios, INMO Air2 can provide AR navigation for walking and cycling to avoid safety problems caused by looking down at the road.

Virtual human-born Li Weike Technology released its first AR glasses Meta Lens in October this year. Li Weike's founding team believes that AR glasses should avoid homogenization competition with VR technology and must go outside in order to give play to the real advantages of AR technology. So Li Weike insisted on making AR glasses for outdoor use from the beginning of his creation.

Meta Lens has a variety of functions, such as video photography, sports recording, listening to music, location query, weather query and news notification, and the professional sports version also has the function of heart rate detection. No external host is required, making Meta Lens an independent smart wearable device.

Meta Lens according to the differences in the use scene, we can divide AR glasses into three categories: screen display, intelligent information flow glasses and specific function glasses. The display screen includes products of brands such as Nreal and Rokid, intelligent information flow glasses take INMO as an example, and specific function glasses cover camera glasses, subtitle glasses and other products.

AR products newly launched by many traditional terminal manufacturers are also testing the waters in these three categories. Such as the Mijia glasses camera mentioned above, it belongs to specific functional glasses. OPPO Air Glass, released by OPPO at the end of last year, belongs to intelligent information flow glasses, including notification reminders, biking navigation and speech inscriptions.

Lenovo's YOGA T1 smart glasses, released in October this year, belong to the head display. In addition to connecting mobile devices to watch movies or play games on a large screen, you can also connect computers or tablets to complete office or drawing creation. It is worth mentioning that the price of Lenovo YOGA T1 is only 1999 yuan, which is the lowest among all the AR products of well-known brands.

Large manufacturers have huge R & D resources, and the R & D costs of some technologies can be diluted in various product lines, which gives them more room for pricing AR products. For example, although Google is not a traditional terminal hardware manufacturer, Google owns the mobile phone business Pixel. In the era of multi-lens and outsole sensors, Pixel is doing the opposite, insisting on using Soc integrated with TPU to improve the ability of computational photography. On the AR glasses limited by volume and weight, Google's AI computing power and image algorithm can make up for the disadvantages caused by the lack of lenses and sensors, and precipitate stronger real-time computing power in real-time interaction with real scenes.

This is the case with Google, not to mention the hardware accumulation of richer Lenovo and Xiaomi. Their connection with suppliers is closer than that of AR startups, coupled with their own wide user base and sinking sales network, "religious" fans are more likely to turn into users of new products, and the upstream cost of traditional terminal manufacturers has an advantage over AR startups whose sales have not yet risen.

Lenovo Yoga smart glasses T1 however, even large manufacturers with sufficient technical reserves, their attitude towards AR glasses is still in the stage of product testing and technology exploration. This is because the technical route of AR glasses is not clear, the mature technology often has defects in effect, but the technology with better effect has the difficulty of mass production, or the cost is high.

Taking the two AR glasses released this year by Thunderbird Innovation, a brand owned by TCL, as an example, we can see the iteration and exploration ideas of AR products under the background of immature technology and uncertain direction.

The Thunderbird Air, released in April this year, sells for 3699 yuan, while the Thunderbird Air 1s, released in October, sells for 2299 yuan. Lower prices can of course reach a wider range of consumers with low market recognition, and the price reduction range is provided by lower costs. Although the two products have the same prefix, they adopt many very different technical solutions.

The biggest change in the two products is reflected in the display, the equivalent screen size and field-of-view angle FOV of Air 1s have been reduced. But at the same time, the PPD (Pixel Per Degree) and color gamut per degree pixel are improved, and the grayscale display is better controlled. It can be said that Air 1s reduces the visual range at the expense of sharpness, contrast, color accuracy and transparency.

2. The choice of technology route is similar to the iterative process of refinement and mobile phone. AR hardware is also a process of technology selection and spiraling. Optics, display, processor, interaction, battery, chip, etc., all affect the whole body.

The existing mainstream AR glasses optical schemes include: prism scheme, Birdbath scheme, free-form surface scheme and optical waveguide scheme. These four schemes under the existing technology have their own advantages and disadvantages, which is the main reason why the optical scheme of AR glasses does not form a standard at present.

The prism scheme consists of a projector and a prism to form an optical display system. The prism reflects the image projected by the projector to the retina of the human eye, so that the displayed image is superimposed with the scene actually observed by the human eye. This is the earliest mature scheme with low technical difficulty. However, the prism scheme has some problems in the display effect, such as small angle of view, thick optical lens, low brightness and so on. Among them, the problem of small field of view angle is the most fatal for AR glasses, so the prism scheme, together with Google Glass, which once became a laughingstock because the wearer needs to "squint up", has become a stepping stone for AR glasses during the transition period.

The angle of view of the Birdbath scheme is slightly larger than that of the prism scheme, but the light loss is also larger, resulting in lower brightness and contrast, and poor effect in the outdoor scene. The free-form surface scheme provides the characteristics of high brightness and high contrast, but the following problems of lens thickness and weight make this scheme can not become the mainstream optical scheme of mass production products.

The early three schemes all had an impossible triangle-large angle of view, thin lenses and good display effects such as brightness and color. In contrast, the optical waveguide scheme has the advantages of light and thin structure and high light transmittance, which can take into account lens thickness, field of view angle and picture presentation effect. Therefore, at the present stage, the optical waveguide scheme is generally regarded as the most ideal optical scheme for AR glasses in the industry. Mainstream products such as HoloLens, Magic Leap, Thunderbird and OPPO Air Glass all adopt optical waveguide scheme.

However, the optical waveguide scheme itself still contains different technical directions, such as arrayed optical waveguides and diffracted optical waveguides, in which diffracted optical waveguides are divided into surface relief grating optical waveguides and holographic grating optical waveguides. These subdivision schemes have their own advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the technical threshold of the optical waveguide scheme is high, the mass production maturity is insufficient and the cost is high, so not all AR glasses products will choose the optical waveguide scheme.

Optical scheme and display technology are not separated, and both of them determine the visual quality of AR glasses. Existing display technologies include passive LCD, DLP and LCoS and active Micro OLED and Micro LED.

Several passive technologies are relatively mature, but LCD technology has low brightness and color gamut. Although the brightness and color gamut of DLP and LCoS are higher, they are larger. Among the active technologies, Micro OLED is widely used in VR, but AR glasses need to be integrated with the external environment, and the brightness of Micro OLED can not meet the needs.

Similar to the optical scheme, the display technology also covers the above three schemes with their own advantages and disadvantages, as well as a relatively more balanced scheme-Micro LED takes into account the advantages of small size, high brightness, wide color gamut, high contrast and so on. Also similar to the optical waveguide scheme, Micro LED is considered by some practitioners to be one of the ultimate solutions in the future, but at present, its technology is still not mature enough, and it will face some problems such as high cost and lack of reliability in mass production.

The processor is the most important component of AR glasses besides optics and display, which determines whether the hardware performance can support the development of AR ecology. Similar to the needs of mobile phones, AR glasses require high-performance, low-power Soc chips. But AR glasses are more stringent than mobile phones in terms of energy efficiency. The mobile phone is used in the hand, and the AR glasses frame is used on the head, the fever will affect the comfort of consumers. And the ecological scene faced by AR glasses is three-dimensional and highly interactive, which requires that AR glasses have a chip with higher computing power than mobile phones. Therefore, how to balance computing power and power consumption has become one of the optimization priorities of manufacturers.

Of course, terminal manufacturers, as solution integrators, have limited contribution to the underlying technology, and performance problems ultimately depend on the speed of development of Qualcomm. Qualcomm's XR chip for VR / AR / MR devices has been iterated many times, and the latest platform is X2 +. Just this past November, Qualcomm launched the first generation of chip "first-generation Snapdragon AR2" for AR smart glasses at the 2022 Snapdragon Summit. However, Moore's Law slowdown is an irreversible trend in the integrated circuit industry, which may restrict the development of AR glasses processor performance. Chiplet core packaging technology may be one of the transitional solutions.

In order to solve the problem of insufficient computing power and high power consumption of the processor, some manufacturers choose to separate the display module from the computing module and connect to form a complete AR glasses device. This kind of product is called split AR glasses, and most of the products of Nreal, Rokid and other manufacturers use split type. These products need to be connected to the mainframe, the glasses mainly play the display function, become mobile phone accessories or additional mainframe. The host computer provides computing power and electricity to the glasses through wired or wireless connections.

Similar to VR, AR split glasses are also considered to be a transitional solution, and the ultimate form envisaged by the industry is mostly one-piece equipment. The existing all-in-one products have worse performance and single function, which are mostly used for information reminder and watching movies.

In the movie "out of Control player", the hero Guy puts on sunglasses and enters the online game world. Interactive technology is also one of the product pain points at this stage. Most AR products on the market still rely on hosts connected to glasses, such as finger touch on mobile phones, and a few AR products choose the same handle controls as VR devices. Both the mainframe and the handle are only compromises in the immature stage of interaction technology.

Although interactive technology is relatively backward at the level of mass production, at the level of patents, enterprises have already carried out arms competition in interactive technology. Some enterprise researchers are demonstrating the application of EMG technology. Similar to VR's brain-computer interface, EMG recognition technology may take a long time to develop before it can be used in mass production.

Technologies including watch bracelets, voice interaction, gesture recognition, EMG recognition and eye movement tracking have entered the research and development stage, and some concept machines that some manufacturers have launched have tried to carry these technologies. Once the technology is mature, it may be used for mass production.

From the perspective of existing products, after the completion of basic technology research and development, it will be the first to land on enterprise-level products. For example, there are far more functions on HoloLens 2 that can interact with gesture recognition than consumer products. This is due to the higher tolerance of enterprise products in the pricing range. With the gradual optimization of enterprise-level products, the technology is becoming more and more mature, and consumer-grade products will choose this technical solution only when the mass production cost is reduced to an appropriate range.

The ideal AR glasses should be light and portable, especially for consumer products. In the final analysis, the above technical problems are the contradiction between high performance, good display effect, interaction in line with the logic of human behavior and frivolous products. Most of the existing technologies can solve one problem, but it is difficult to take into account the two contradictory aspects, which is the fundamental reason why the technical threshold of AR glasses remains high.

Immature technology leads to high product pricing. Although the pricing of AR products on the market is similar to that of mid-range mobile phones, compared with the maturity of mobile phone products, consumers pay such a high cost for a "tasting product" with ever-changing technology and low ecological richness of content, so it is difficult to popularize AR glasses.

Moreover, the AR industry does not have a representative product with more than 10 million users like Quest 2 to the VR industry.

According to Strategy Analytics, 81% of shipments of AR glasses in 2020 came from B-end products. Even so, Hololens, the leader in B-end products, brings Microsoft only 100, 000 shipments a year. None of the C-end products with a lower market share have established a brand mind. Even if you add up the entire AR market in 2021 and 2022, shipments from the enterprise market and the consumer market combined are far less than 10 million.

Software: where is the card? There are many difficulties in front of the hardware, and the ecological aspect of soft is not easy. With reference to the ecology of smartphones and VR, we can divide the ecology of AR into three parts: operating system, application and content.

The AR glasses operating system seems to have more problems than hardware technology. At the beginning of this year, Meta was revealed to have suspended the research and development of XROS, the VR / AR operating system, and disbanded a 300-person R & D team. The long-awaited Apple rOS (realityOS) is also the first to see the end, inside and outside the industry can only trace traces of rOS from trademark application lists and iOS system code. Most of the actions on Apple's new system are at the stage of rumors: for example, Apple is building new Message applications, developing AR chat rooms, adapting to Facetime, and so on.

The operating system of start-up enterprises is even more difficult to make waves. Rokid's Yoda OS is too little known, and the sales of Rokid hardware products restrict the contact points of its operating system. Magicleap's LuminOS system, on the other hand, has been questioned as "skinned Android".

Android is the source of mobile phone manufacturers, providing the interaction of mobile phones and a large number of applications. But at the same time, Android is also the curse of mobile phone brands. The problem with third-party systems for mobile phone manufacturers is obvious: the iterations of Android and Qualcomm chips do not complement each other. An Android manufacturer has a natural flaw in the underlying connection. By contrast, the competitiveness of Apple's products comes from Jobs' persistent hard-and-soft strategy.

Players in the AR glasses industry may not be able to do without Google. Mark Lukovsky, project leader of XROS, which was disbanded by Meta, joined Google at the end of last year to lead the development of the AR operating system. At present, most of the interactive interfaces of AR glasses are optimized from Android.

The sales of well-known VR products, such as Meta Quest and Pico, can not support the surge in short-term costs brought by enterprises' self-research systems from scratch. AR glasses whose sales have not improved, it is even more difficult to use the number of terminal connections to feed the development of operating systems.

In fact, the operating system is limited by the immaturity of hardware technology, and hardware sales are in turn restricted by "inhumane" operating systems. This vicious circle also exists between applications and hardware.

At present, the AR applications on the C side mostly rely on smart terminals such as mobile phones, and the AR game "Pok é mon GO" is one of the elements that detonate the AR topic in recent years. However, it is difficult to quantify how much the out-of-circle of Pok é mon GO is related to AR. The traffic that comes with IP alone provides the basis for creating a popular style. At the same time, the ability to open Pok é mon GO through a mobile phone is precisely the key to reaching a wide range of players. Imagine if Pok é mon GO would be able to attract players from all groups as it actually did if Pok é mon went online only in the market for the poorly sold AR glasses.

Moreover, the systems and components of different brands of AR glasses are very different, and adapting to a variety of ecology may need to be developed repeatedly, which is also one of the reasons for the huge gap in the content of AR glasses. By contrast, assistive tools such as AR social networking, AR shopping and filters on mobile phones support most of the current AR apps.

Snapchat, Instagram and other social software have launched a number of AR filters to help AR marketing. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon, JD.com and Taobao also provide AR capabilities that allow consumers to try on makeup, fitting and other functions that may affect shopping decisions on their phones.

Pok é mon GO Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and other international well-known brands have also tried to launch more interactive AR advertising, AR marketing is considered to be the most potential AR application scenario at this stage.

The Snap mentioned above is one of the beneficiaries of AR marketing favored by brands. According to data released by Snap last year, more than 250000 filter creators, developers, brands and partners are gathered on the Snap AR platform. The 2.5 million filters made by all parties have been viewed by users more than 3.5 trillion times. From the perspective of popularizing AR applications and education market, Snap is undoubtedly the enterprise with the most extensive consumer application scenarios.

This article comes a week after Disney announced a partnership with Snapchat to launch the AR filter to promote the marketing of Avatar 2. Through the AR filter, users can see themselves transformed into a blue-skinned, pointed-eared "Namei".

Snap bet on AR, derived from the AR gene that Snap itself has. Snap's main business is social software Snapchat, whose technology, including Lens camera effects, makes it an authentic "AR app." According to data released by Snap at this year's annual developer / partner conference, an average of 250 million users use AR Lens on Snapchat every day, compared with 330 million daily active users for the entire Snap. In other words, more than 75% of Snap users use the AR feature every day. In addition, users who use AR Lens's e-commerce-specific shopping feature almost double the conversion rate.

In addition, Snap has also developed Lens Studio and Lens Cloud to provide a development environment for AR developers, including ray tracing and depth awareness technologies.

But in the final analysis, Snap's AR application is still focused on the mobile scene, and the number of AR glasses applications is far from enough to support consumer products.

There are more than a thousand applications on the Meta platform, but there are only nearly a hundred applications in the Rokid application market. Comparing the number of mobile apps, it is easy to see the lack of AR glasses applications-2.72 million App have been detected in China alone. By the end of November 2021, Apple stores had 1.36 million App models in China and Android stores had 1.37 million App models, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Similar to Snap, many AR application vendors diverge and expand AR content around their own genes and core advantages. Li Weike Technology, as a manufacturer of digital origin, in addition to "not doing my job" to launch AR hardware products, digital man "Li Weike" and two other digital human characters of the Li Weike AI family, Zero and Xiao Ke, are also installed in AR glasses to provide users with anthropomorphic interaction.

Snap will launch its first AR virtual shopping mall in the Middle East and North Africa. L'Or é al, Ikea, Samsung and other brands will be based on content. When there is a large gap in AR applications, it is even more difficult to call AR content rich. The integrated equipment is limited to the lack of performance, and the content is mainly based on information exchange. The portability of split devices is insufficient, and the content is still mainly in the field of entertainment. However, at present, most screen displays can only be used to simulate cinema scenes, focusing on the "giant screen" rather than 3D.

In theory, AR glasses have one more dimension than mobile phones, and the number of applications should increase exponentially. Even under the background of underdeveloped hardware, practitioners in various industries can easily predict the possible changes that AR glasses will bring to their own industry.

Entertainment, education, social, office, travel, shopping, every scene of consumers' life and work may be brought about earth-shaking changes by AR glasses; industrial design and manufacturing, collaborative office, medical, education and other industries will also bring a new round of technological revolution because of the application of AR glasses.

According to IDC's forecast, by 2026, AR / VR technology will be widely used by users in three industries: education, health care and professional services. As far as the AR market is concerned, by 2026, AR training, industrial maintenance and AR laboratory and field practice will become the mainstream application scenarios.

The application and content of AR glasses is not a simple problem in the field of software, but due to the lack of mature software and hardware ecology. One practitioner once commented on the VR industry: "hardware manufacturers and other software side make content, software side and other hardware manufacturers expand the market, neither side is willing to sell the risk of the first step." The problems in the AR industry are even worse.

But even so, the imagination of AR glasses in the application scene has attracted countless software and hardware manufacturers and developers to find the way forward in the mixture of darkness and light.

On November 23, Luo Yonghao's AR startup, Fine Red Line Technology, announced the completion of a $50 million angel round of financing. Less than half a year after its establishment, Lao Luo's AR company has completed two rounds of financing, with a post-investment valuation of about 200 million US dollars. Coincidentally, two months after Lao Luo announced the start-up of AR, former Smartisan COO Wu Dezhou, a former comrade-in-arms of Lao Luo, also set up a company called "pay homage to the unknown" to start the AR hardware business.

Wu Dezhou was the maker of Huawei's first mobile phone with a built-in antenna. Zhang Huimin, a former chief architect in Huawei's mobile phone business, founded AR hardware company Singularity approach, which also raised nearly 100 million yuan in September.

"the AR industry is now like the eve of Apple's iPhone in 2007." Wu Dezhou said.

I hope he's telling the truth.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:deep-echo, author: Huang Fu Yuwen

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