Apple's mixed reality headset could be what the entire AR/VR market needs to succeed

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo

 believes that that to date, investors have overestimated customers' actual desire and demand for mixed and virtual reality headsets
True that.

True that.

However I feel that what they need isn’t a slick new device from Apple, they need a reason to have one. Gaming? Not really, while there’s some hard core gamers, casual games are a much bigger slice of the market and they don’t need one. Business? Not really, there are a FEW specialized fields that might benefit, the adoption is going to be slow, and most businesses have no use for them. Movies? Not hardly, even watching at home people like to socialize, not be walled off in their own little private theatre. 

It’s really cool tech, but nobody has made a case for why every person should have one. Or even every household, or the vast majority of people. I’ve played with VR, and AR systems. They are cool as heck, but cool is not a use case. Cool is not a need.

The focus here is incorrect. Nothing can really take off until the infraestructure is in place. That won't happen until 5.5G although the road to that has already begun with FTTR. 

Once in place, widespread adoption will be possible as content becomes available.

There is no point bringing a content dependent device to market if the content is not there. That will change over time.

It is exactly the same as what happened with the internet. 

DAalseth said:

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that that to date, investors have overestimated customers' actual desire and demand for mixed and virtual reality headsets
True that.

True that.

However I feel that what they need isn’t a slick new device from Apple, they need a reason to have one. Gaming? Not really, while there’s some hard core gamers, casual games are a much bigger slice of the market and they don’t need one. Business? Not really, there are a FEW specialized fields that might benefit, the adoption is going to be slow, and most businesses have no use for them. Movies? Not hardly, even watching at home people like to socialize, not be walled off in their own little private theatre. 

It’s really cool tech, but nobody has made a case for why every person should have one. Or even every household, or the vast majority of people. I’ve played with VR, and AR systems. They are cool as heck, but cool is not a use case. Cool is not a need.

I think it's important to separate AR and VR.    You're right that there are really no 'killer apps' for VR that millions of customers would flock to.  But I don't understand why you glom AR into the same bucket.  There are literally millions of potential use cases for AR in everyday life.  Take me, for example: I have two CS degrees and consider myself pretty smart - but I can't remember peoples' names for the life of me.  Other than relatives and friends I regularly see, I draw a blank with names whenever I meet an acquaintance.  It often leads to awkward moments.  It would be a pretty trivial application of AR to show a name label above the heads of the people I meet.  Even mundane existing functions that currently exist on smartphones would become better.  E.g. notifications showing up in front of you so there's no need to look down at your smartwatch or pull your phone out of the pocket.  My iPhone has been able to give me walking directions forever.  But who wants to hold a phone in front of them while walking?  Staring at my watch for directions is only slightly better.  Walking directions that simply show you an arrow to the left/right in your field of vision whenever you need to make a turn would make walking navigation completely painless.

I don't know what Apple's plans are for AR glasses.  Whatever might show up this year will not be AR glasses, that's for sure.  And if the rumors of why AR glasses keep getting delayed are to be believed - that Apple can't yet fit the needed processing power into regular size glasses - then I think Apple is taking the wrong approach.  If, instead of insisting AR glasses should be standalone devices, they'd make it a partner device to the iPhone, then the AR glasses would not have to carry the heavy processing burden it otherwise has to!  It would definitely be possible with today's technology to have regular sized AR glasses if those glasses only projected images provided by the phone and sent data captured from its sensors/cameras to the phone for processing.  Any other approach is simply not feasible with current battery tech.

Some of the rumors cited patents for vision correction as a capability.  I expect that isn't part of the 1st gen device, but when it arrives and I get vision correction along with AR, that will be killer. A good pair of glasses with all the features I need costs over $300 with insurance.  I would take the cost of my existing glasses into account when considering the AR glasses.

You may be wondering:  I'm not a great candidate for laser correction.  If I got laser correction, I would still need glasses.

Sorry but Ming is way off base here. Of course, the appetite for VR/AR headsets is low. All the current ones suck in their own way. It would be like saying there's no market for the iPod because the Zune is so terrible. Or there's no market for the iPhone because Blackberry is so bad.