Meta AR glasses roadmap shows Zuckerberg pushing hard for 'iPhone moment' by 2024 - report
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Meta Platforms (FB
+0.6%) used a February event to showcase the role of artificial intelligence in the company's future, with a nod to an eventual release of new eyeglasses tapping augmented reality (AR) - the ability to overlay information on the world a user sees around them. A new look at the company's AR roadmap shows a push to make a splash with new glasses as soon as 2024.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a particular interest in the product, wanting it to be "an iPhone moment," a source tells The Verge, adding "Zuck's ego is intertwined" with the glasses.
It's a "holy grail" device that will mark a redefinition of people's relationship with technology, akin to the rollout of smartphones, Zuckerberg says, but the demos so far haven't been based on functioning hardware or software, suggesting the reality of that vision is some years away.
The company's roadmap - for "Project Nazare" - suggests employees are racing to deliver a first generation of the AR glasses by 2024, with work ongoing for a lighter design by 2026 and a third version by 2028.
The first version is meant to work independently from smartphones with the help of a wireless, phone-shaped device taking on part of the computing load, according to the report. But Meta is also working on a pair of cheaper smart glasses (codenamed Hypernova) for 2024 that are meant to pair with a nearby phone for messages and notifications in a heads-up display.
Internal sales expectations for the first version of Nazare are light, in the low tens of thousands, for a device that is likely to be more expensive than the $299 Quest VR headset. But combined with the lower-budget Hypernova project and Meta's Ray-Ban Wayfarer Stories camera glasses, Meta hopes to be selling "tens of millions" of smart glasses by the end of the decade.
Whatever the varied outcomes in the decade ahead, Meta (FB
+0.6%) will be wrestling with Apple (AAPL
+1.2%), which could have its AR headset ready by later this year.