Apple has a curriculum vitae of buying smaller companies whose technologies show up years later in its by-products. In 2013, Apple acquired a small Israeli firm called PrimeSense that required three-dimensional sensors. The iPhone X, launched last year, used a be like sensor to power facial recognition features.
Bloomberg last year report in investigated that Apple was developing augmented reality glasses that could move as early as 2020.
Apple declined to comment on its plans or products.
But the company definitive year launched augmented reality applications for its iPhones and iPads, and CEO Tim Cook has labeled augmented reality a “big and profound” technology development.
“This is one of those stupendous things that we’ll look back at and marvel on the start of it,” Cook said of augmented fact on a conference call with investors last year.
The Akonia property is the first clear indication of how Apple might handle one of the most disheartening challenges in augmented reality hardware: Producing crystal clear optical flaunts thin and light enough to fit into glasses similar to everyday draw ups with images bright enough for outdoor use and suited to mass turning at a relatively low price.
Augmented reality headsets currently on the market such as Microsoft’s HoloLense and startup Mystic Leap’s Magic Leap One both use darkened lenses and are intended for indoor use. Both are also purpose for software developers testing the technology and cost several thousand dollars.