Snapchat! It's among the very biggest apps in the world and incredibly popular with Millenials. So everyone in the augmented reality industry was excited last year when the holding company Snap put out its "AR lite" Spectacles:
[W]ith the $130 sunglass-camera hybrid Spectacles, Snapchat parent Snap has served up the world's hottest training wheels for AR... "It is a gateway drug to more AR," said Jim Merrick, chipmaker Qualcomm's marketing director for internet of things products. "It's the wearability of [Spectacles], and it doesn't have the Google Glass creepiness factor."... "It's getting people exposed to the concept of having a wearable on that's not some crazy 5-inch-thick piece of glass in front of your face," said Vince Cacace, the CEO of Vertebrae, a startup developing advertising formats for VR and AR. "I could see 6,000 girls wearing this to Coachella."
To be honest, last year I thought things like that too. So to everyone of us who described Spectacles as an entry ramp into mainstream acceptance of augmented reality, let's all gather and eat a whole slice of humble reality pie:
Citing “two people close to the company,” the Information reported Monday that Snap had “badly overestimated demand” and now has “hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses, either fully assembled or in parts.” ... As Business Insider pointed out in August, the company reported just $5.4 million in “other” revenue in its second quarter, down from $8.3 million in its first quarter. Spectacles are presumed to make up the bulk of revenue in this category. It’s one thing to only sell 150,000 of a product in its first year, as long as sales are growing. If they’re already tailing off, that suggests the product might be doomed.
150,000 is a smaller annual sales rate than even the most high end VR devices, and as noted above, Spectacles are selling for much cheaper, and are linked to (and promoted by) an already massively popular smartphone app. Of any AR or AR-lite device on the market, Spectacles had the best chance by far to gain mainstream success. But since Spectacles can't sell, why should anyone think, say, Microsoft Hololens or Magic Leap or any other AR device will sell any better? (And please don't say because Magic Leap has over $1 billion in funding, because all that money gives the company no marketing advantage in the consumer market.) Instead, we're left with the problem Google couldn't conquer with Glass, and Apple seems to have balked at: Inherent, intrinsic resistance to wearing reality distorting technology on one's face.
Only the most rabid of Snap fans HAD to own a camera that sat on your nose to send the pictures to your phone. It was a gimmick to promote Snap, pure and simple. The rest of us with little to no discretionary funds were content to use the phone's camera to puke rainbows.
Facebook is still the company to watch for as far as broad public AR immersion goes. And it will be through the phone itself. People that thought Snap's spectacles were going to bust AR wide open deserve to eat humble pie. Especially Snap for overproducing an item that the rest of us clearly recognized it for what it was.
Posted by: Joey1058 | Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 11:37 AM
Capture only, no value added as view-aiding device. Hence not augmenting reality at all.
Posted by: Reuben Steiger | Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 12:11 PM
It does indeed have AR-type features:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/11/13601938/snapchat-spectacles-specs-filters-photos-video-hands-on
"Snapchat is using a circular video format with Spectacles, and when the videos are saved or shared to other platforms it shows up as just that: a circle of video. But when played in Snapchat itself, the format lets users twist and move their phone around to explore the full range of captured video, almost like a micro augmented reality rig. A viewer can watch a video snap of a person in portrait orientation, for example, and then turn their phone landscape to reveal two other friends to either side that they wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. It’s another way in which Spectacles offer a sense of real-world immediacy, almost like you’re watching something out of Strange Days. Add in the fact that you can also incorporate traditional Snapchat elements like text and drawing — each of which becomes fixed in the virtual space — and it’s easy to see the new layers of creativity Snapchat users could start utilizing when they finally get their hands on Spectacles."
Posted by: Wagner J Au | Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 02:20 PM
This is just a camera built into sunglasses. That is not augmented reality.
Posted by: Imagin Illyar | Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 06:17 AM
I agree with the other answers: Hololens can augment the world around you, enabling a lot of applications. These glasses are only fancy wearable cameras.
Posted by: TonyVT Skarredghost | Saturday, October 28, 2017 at 03:35 PM