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

Introduction: in June this year, the industry's long-awaited "consumer electronics weather vane" Apple officially released its first space computing device-the Vision Pro. Although it will not be released until early next year at the earliest, this product has brought unprecedented attention and discussion to the VR / AR industry. The official entry of the technology giant may lead the industry to break the situation, and it will also trigger a new round of fierce competition. Only from the online sales performance of consumer-grade AR glasses in the first half of 2023, Thunderbird Innovation, XREAL and Rokid ranked among the top three in the market, and the CR3 index was nearly 80%.

The online sales of domestic consumer grade AR are growing strongly, and the competition pattern is changing steadily.

In the first half of 2023, the sales of domestic consumer-grade AR glasses online platform continued, and the consumer-grade AR market entered a stage of rapid development. In terms of market competition pattern, Thunderbird Innovation, XREAL (formerly Nreal), Rokid, Huawei and INMO are the top five sales volume, among which Thunderbird Innovation continues its advantage of the previous year and further expands, ranking first with a market share of 32.9%. XREAL and Rokid also increased by different degrees, winning the second and third places with a market share of 22.9% and 19.7%, respectively. Huawei officially launched its first smart movie viewing AR glasses at the end of December last year and parachuted into fourth place with an 11% share in the first half of the year. INMO ranked fifth with 5.2 per cent.

Star AR manufacturers attach importance to user experience, continue to iterate products and create content ecology; innovative enterprises enter the bureau one after another to stimulate industry activity; large factories actively layout and act frequently, driving the development of the industry from capital, industry and ecological aspects; driven by various forces, the industry as a whole shows a thriving development trend.

New AR products continue to emerge, the experience effect is enhanced in many dimensions, and the application scenarios tend to be diversified.

As of June, most of the new AR devices that have been released are split design and lighter. In terms of optical solutions, most manufacturers have extended the Birdbath (BB) scheme, and some manufacturers have simultaneously launched the products of the optical waveguide scheme. In terms of display scheme, silicon-based OLED is still the mainstream configuration in the AR market, such as Thunderbird, XREAL and other star enterprises, all products use Micro OLED display to add color to the display effect of their products.

In order to further enhance the user experience, based on the existing AR products, manufacturers have launched independent application terminals, such as Rokid Station, Thunderbird Box, Xreal Beam and so on. This kind of terminal expands the content source and further enriches consumers' mobile audio and video entertainment experience by providing massive ultra-high definition film and television content resources and increasing external storage. On the other hand, the brand also strengthens the spatial display perception and optimizes the interaction between virtual and real users by adding new interactive sensing devices, spatial computing algorithms and audio algorithms to the mainframe. For users to present a more immersive, surround three-dimensional audio-visual effect.

Audio-visual, entertainment and games are the mainstream scenes of AR glasses application. With the deepening of integration of AR products and users' lives, AR products are constantly infiltrating in sports, work, study, social, travel and other scenarios. The diversification of optical solutions, product positioning and application scenarios, on the one hand, enrich the overall market, simultaneously clarify the product differentiation of each family.

Thunderbird innovation

In January, Thunderbird X2 made its debut on CES 2023. This product adopts an all-in-one design, equipped with Snapdragon XR2 chip and ultra-precision Micro LED full-color light engine, which has a significant improvement in AR computing power, display brightness, SLAM ability and so on. As the first mass-produced consumer binocular full-color Micro LED waveguide AR glasses, Thunderbird X2 ushered in a new era of the next generation of consumer AR glasses.

On May 18, Thunderbird innovated and released the consumer XR smart glasses Thunderbird Air Plus and the matching audio-visual entertainment terminal Thunderbird box. The set of Thunderbird Air Plus + Thunderbird box is priced at 3298 yuan and the initial price is 2799 yuan. Thunderbird Air Plus is the third intelligent glasses product of Thunderbird's innovative BB product line. It is equipped with Sony Micro OLED display screen, which brings 6m distance equivalent 215in display effect and supports the highest 120hz refresh rate. The matching multi-function audio-visual entertainment terminal Thunderbird Magic Box expands the scope of application of the group, while providing novel play and user experience in different scenes such as home, office, travel, etc.

Thunderbird consumer smart glasses products: Thunderbird Air Plus + Thunderbird box

On May 31, Thunderbird announced at AWE USA 2023 that it will cooperate with Qualcomm Technologies to develop a series of advanced AR functions based on Snapdragon's ™XR processor; at the same time, the two will jointly explore the possibility of integrating Thunderbird's innovative AR glasses with the Snapdragon Spaces ™developer platform to create a rich AR ecology for consumers around the world.

XREAL

On May 25, Nreal officially changed its name to XREAL and launched a new firmware product, XREAL Beam, under the name of XREAl, which enhances the adaptability of XREAL Air to iPhone and Windows.

On June 28, XREAL made its debut at MWC with AR space screen, XREAL Air and new hardware product XREAL Beam. XREAL spatial screen is the general name of virtual screen generated by XREAL glasses and different terminals. Based on the self-developed spatial perception algorithm and optical engine, it has advantages in clarity, contrast, wide color gamut, refresh rate, delay, distortion and so on. At present, XREAL Air 2D mode and XREAL Air 3D mode can support 120Hz refresh and 90Hz refresh respectively, and the spatial screen display effect has been upgraded.

XREAL consumer smart glasses product: XREAL Air+XREAL Beam

Rokid

On March 21, Rokid Open Day 2023 was launched online and brought a number of important new products, including Rokid Max (initial price 2999 yuan), new generation AR computing platform Station Pro, AR space operating system YodaOS-Master and AR creation tool Lingjing ARMazda3. Compared with Rokid Air,Rokid Max, the BB optical scheme is still adopted, but there are improvements in display area (6m equivalent 215in), field of view angle (50 °), refresh rate (maximum support for 120Hz) and machine weight (75g). It is equipped with AAC's first AR special superlinear loudspeaker, which further enhances the sense of audio-visual immersion.

Rokid consumer smart glasses product: Rokid Max

Huawei

On November 12, 2022, Huawei's first smart viewing glasses, Vision Glass, made its debut at the 2022 World VR Industry Congress, which was officially released on December 9 and went on sale on December 26. HUAWEI Vision Glass's data line and glasses are designed as a whole, with an equivalent 4m distance of 120in virtual screen effect, 50 + pixel density PPD and 480nits brightness, the product pursues thin, high-definition, large screen viewing experience.

Huawei consumer smart glasses product: Vision Glass

INMO

On October 28, 2022, INMO unveiled its second-generation AR glasses INMO Air2; on October 28, 2022. On April 19 this year, INMO's first second-generation wireless AR glasses equipped with GPT models went on sale. The combination of AR glasses and smart ring INMO Ring is priced at 3999 yuan. INMO Air2 focuses on travel scenes such as video and audio reading, real-time multilingual voice translation, AR navigation, and fast recording. INMO Air2 adopts the silicon-based OLED + array optical waveguide combination technology scheme. Compared with the first generation products, it implements the SLAM space algorithm on wireless lightweight glasses, and the frame volume is reduced by nearly 30%, and the thickness of the mirror leg is reduced to 6cm, making it the thinnest form of wireless AR glasses in the industry.

INMO consumer smart glasses products: INMO Air2 + smart ring INMO Ring set

The performance of optical waveguide volume production products is upgraded, and the consumer AR market is ready to start.

Throughout the AR glasses market, miniaturization, lightweight, visual clarity and comfort are the factors for more users to choose AR glasses products. At present, AR glasses mainly adopt BB optical display scheme, which gives full play to its advantages of good imaging quality in viewing and other uses. The product with BB scheme can control the weight of the whole machine at about 80g, but its optical module is larger, the lens is thicker, and the light transmittance is relatively low, so it is impossible to see the real scene clearly. Compared with the BB scheme, the optical waveguide scheme has advantages in lightweight, transmittance and brightness, and has become a recognized iterative direction of AR glasses in the industry.

At present, brands including Thunderbird, INMO, OPPO and ZTE have released AR glasses products based on optical waveguide technology, which enriches the product form of the whole AR industry to a certain extent. Among them, Thunderbird X2 adopts the technical scheme of Micro LED + diffracted optical waveguide and takes the lead in realizing the full-color display of binocular display. the product is expected to be put on the market in 2023. OPPO's new generation of AR glasses concept product OPPO Air Glass 2 introduces Spark micro-optical machine, Micro LED and resin diffracted optical waveguide technology, which is upgraded to a binocular design and is thinner, weighing only 38g. The INMO Air2 uses binocular full-color array optical waveguides and the optical machine uses Mirco OLED, which went on sale in April. In addition, ZTE has also released nubia Neo Air glasses, which use single green Micro LED and resin diffracted optical waveguide technology, while Star Meizu optical waveguide glasses are also expected to be released in the second half of this year.

With the cutting-edge exploration and brave attempt of the cutting-edge companies in the AR industry, the increasingly mature technology of optical module manufacturers and the active participation of relevant players in the industry chain, the optical waveguide display scheme will gradually narrow the gap with the mature BB scheme in color and brightness, and in the foreseeable future, more and more will be used in consumer-grade AR glasses products to further meet the daily wearing needs of users and broaden the application scene. The mature landing of optical waveguide technology and the improvement of the industrial chain will achieve rapid penetration of the consumer market and rising sales.

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