Augmented Reality

For all the talk of augmented reality being
the next big thing, the failure of Google Glass
suggested the augmenteds reality would be far
different from expectation.

A quick look at Google Trends – a
somewhat more successful product – showed
that interest in Google Glass peaked in May 2013
and has subsequently dwindled to less than a
twentieth of that today.

Failure also beset Microsoft’s Hololens 2,
which has kicked its release date to 2019.

At some moments,augmented reality has seemed
to channel Charles
de Gaulle’s quip that Brazil is, “a country of the
future, and will always be.” Hence the
future is elsewhere.

Yet these false starts may yet give way to a
technological revolution. Augmented reality never
took off because the price of access was too
high, with devices costing more than $1,000.

That led to a classic chicken and egg problem when it
came to content: only a few developers were on
the platform because only a few customers were,
so only a few developers were.

But this is
likely to change in the near future, as
production prices drop and opportunities
open up.