萝莉视频

Events in the past couple of weeks indicate that the AR future may be inching closer to the present day.

Follow 萝莉视频 News on

In August, finally released its AR headset and dev kit to developers. It was the first sign of product viability out of the company, which as 萝莉视频 News reported, has over its seven-year lifespan.

Magic Leap is far and away the most-funded startup in the . The chart below shows just how big a chunk of venture capital funding into the AR category went to Magic Leap.

Magic Leap is a company with few privately-held competitors. It鈥檚 worth noting that 鈥攁 Chinese manufacturer of smart speakers and, recently, its own AR glasses鈥攊s the only other hardware company to surface in this ranking.

Otherwise, it鈥檚 mostly been big tech companies jumping into the AR ring. launched its Hololens product back in 2016. Remember Google Glass, the search giant鈥檚 attempt at smart glasses? Though these products may have failed to gain traction among more mainstream users, they continue to be used in industry-specific settings.

Earlier this week, news broke that with . According to the company鈥檚 , it鈥檚 developed the 鈥渨orld鈥檚 first commercially available volume holographic reflective and waveguide optics for transparent display elements in smart glasses.鈥� This lends some credence to a recent from analyst Ming Chi Kuo suggesting Apple may launch an AR glasses product as early as 2020.

Although (骋辞辞驳濒别鈥檚 ), , and Apple may have nearly limitless coffers to fund new product R&D and acquire companies, startups don鈥檛. They typically raise money from outside investors like venture capitalists. And, in recent years, Magic Leap has raised a disproportionate amount of the capital, as the chart below shows.

It could be argued that Magic Leap, by raising so much VC money鈥攁n order of magnitude more than any other AR competitor鈥攈as kind of sucked the air out of the AR hardware startup market. If Magic Leap fails to deliver on its promise, delivering an experience that鈥檚 nothing short of magical, there isn鈥檛 a deep bench of privately-held upstarts to compete against tech鈥檚 big five.

This being said, venture investment into AR startups is near a local maximum, as we can see in the chart below.

Virtual reality (VR) has been around for quite a while, but AR products aren鈥檛 even mainstream yet, at least not at the consumer level. There鈥檚 a reason for that, though.

For all the technological advancements in displays, sensors, input devices, and user experience design that made VR immersive and accessible enough to everyday consumers, AR must accomplish as well. But, this time, AR hardware aspirants need to develop translucent display technology and understand how AR content would interact with real-world objects, among other challenges.

AR technology promises a future with fewer physical screens, because everything could virtually become one. Long before that鈥檚 possible, though, there needs to be a strong ecosystem of applications and developers. But for the developers to come, there needs to be a robust hardware and OS platform. And we鈥檙e barely at that point now.