Apple CEO: 'Augmented reality' tech's future

Tim Cook has talked up a lot of technologies since becoming Apple's chief executive in 2011. Driverless cars. Artificial intelligence. Streaming television.

But no technology has fired up Cook quite like augmented reality, which overlays images, video and games on the real world. Cook has likened the technology's game-changing potential to that of the smartphone. At some point, he said last year, we will all "have [augmented reality] experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you."

Investors impatient for Apple's next breakthrough will be happy to know that Cook is very serious about augmented reality. People with knowledge of the company's plans say Apple has embarked on an ambitious bid to provide the technology to the masses -- an effort Cook and his team see as the best way for the company to dominate the next generation of gadgetry and keep people wedded to its ecosystem.

Apple has built a team combining the strengths of its hardware and software veterans with the expertise of talented outsiders, say the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

Run by a former Dolby Laboratories executive, the group includes engineers who worked on the Oculus and HoloLens virtual reality headsets sold by Facebook and Microsoft as well as digital-effects wizards from Hollywood. Apple has also acquired several small firms with knowledge of augmented-reality hardware, 3-D gaming and virtual reality software.

As previously reported by Bloomberg, Apple is working on several augmented-reality products, including digital spectacles that could connect wirelessly to an iPhone and beam content -- movies, maps and more -- to the wearer. While the glasses are a ways off, augmented-reality features could show up in the iPhone sooner. Apple declined to comment.

The global market for AR products will surge 80 percent to $165 billion by 2024, according to researcher Global Market Insights. But Apple really has no choice, says Gene Munster, a founding partner at Loup Ventures who covered the company for many years as an analyst.

Over time, Munster says, augmented-reality devices will replace the iPhone.

"It's something they need to do to continue to grow," he says, "and defend against the shift in how people use hardware."

Augmented reality is the less-known cousin of virtual reality. Virtual reality gets more attention because it completely immerses users in an artificial world and has an obvious attraction for gamers. So far, however, headsets such as the Oculus and HoloLens are niche rather than mainstream products. Apple believes augmented reality will be an easier sell because it's less intrusive. Referring to virtual-reality headsets, Cook last year said he thought few people will want to be "enclosed in something."

Building a successful augmented-reality product will be no easy task, even for a company known for slim, sturdy devices. The current crop of augmented-reality glasses are either underpowered and flimsy or powerful and overwhelmingly large. Apple, the king of thin and light, will have to leapfrog current products by launching something small and powerful.

Adding such features to the iPhone isn't a giant leap. Building glasses will be harder. Like the Watch, they'll probably be tethered to the iPhone. While the smartphone will do the heavy lifting, beaming 3-D content to the glasses will consume a lot of power, so prolonging battery life will be crucial.

Content is key, too. If Apple's augmented-reality glasses lack useful apps, immersive games and interesting media content, why would someone wear them? The glasses will also require a new operating system and perhaps even a new chip. Finally, Apple will have to source the guts of the gadget cheaply enough to make it affordable for the mass market.

When it was developing the Watch, Apple put together a multidisciplinary team drawn from inside and outside the company. It has done much the same with the augmented-reality effort. In 2015, Apple recruited Mike Rockwell, who previously ran the hardware and new technologies groups at Dolby, known for its audio and video technology. Rockwell also advised Meta, a small firm that makes $950 AR glasses and counts Dolby as an investor.

Rockwell now runs the main augmented-reality team at Apple, reporting to Dan Riccio, who's in charge of the iPhone and iPad hardware engineering groups, the people said.

"He's a really sharp guy," says Jack McCauley, who co-founded and worked at Oculus before it was sold to Facebook in 2015. "He could certainly put a team together that could get an Apple [augmented-reality] project going."

Apple has rounded out the team with iPhone, camera and optical lens engineers. There are people with experience in sourcing the raw materials for the glasses. The company has also mined the movie industry's 3-D animation ranks, the people said, opening a Wellington office and luring several employees from Weta Digital, the New Zealand special-effects shop that worked on King Kong, Avatar and other films.

The augmented-reality glasses are further down the road, the people say. Getting the product right will be key, of course.

Apple's first stab at wearables, the Watch, has failed to become a mainstream hit. And the Google Glassheadset bombed in 2014. Still, time and again, Apple has waited for others to go first and then gone on to dominate the market.

"To be successful in [augmented reality], there is the hardware piece, but you have to do other stuff too: from maps to social to payments," Munster says. "Apple is one of the only companies that will be able to pull it off."

Information for this article was contributed by Alex Webb and Mark Bergen of Bloomberg News.

SundayMonday Business on 03/27/2017

Upcoming Events