Apple’s Nonexistent Smartglasses Beat Google’s In Survey

The product doesn’t even exist yet, but Apple still managed to beat Google in the smartglasses market.

A recent survey of AR/VR industry insiders by Digi-Capital and AWE saw Apple come in as the third-most important smartglasses platform, after Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap.

The data in the report explains that there are five challenges used to rate consumer smartglasses: hero device (i.e. an Apple-quality device, whether made by the tech giant or someone else), all-day battery life, mobile connectivity, app ecosystem, and price.

“If anyone is going to launch Apple-quality smartglasses, it’s Apple. Despite a narrative of the company being more evolutionary than revolutionary in recent years, Apple’s design track record remains a standout,” Tim Merel, managing director, and Isabelle Hierholtz, user strategy director of Silicon Valley AR/VR adviser at Digi-Capital, wrote. “Unless Apple has a secret battery technology under wraps, smartphone-tethered smartglasses could be a practical solution to the battery challenge with current technology.”

In fact, Digi-Capital first predicted that Apple would launch smartphone-tethered smartglasses in late 2020 over three years ago, but there is still no word on whether that particular product will actually come to fruition. However, it is estimated that if it does, Apple could sell several tens of millions of “Apple Glasses” to consumers by 2023, while standalone smartglasses as a mass-consumer smartphone replacement look further out, according to the report.

“Apple has already attracted 43 percent of port for a smartglasses product about which it has said and revealed nothing. So it’s not unreasonable to speculate a larger relative uplift supporting Apple Glasses if and when it launches. While HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman and Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz should be happy about their industry support today, Apple could get a whole lot of love from the industry if it chooses to take them on.”