Recently there are foreign media reports that industry leaks show that Apple is exploring the development of two new products within the company, one is AR glasses, the other is AirPods with a camera.

 

 

 

Supply chain news also shows that Apple in accordance with the rhythm of previous years on the smart glasses components provided by the supplier of the regular sample inquiries and the supplier's own research and development of the sample initiative to send samples for testing, but Apple in the first quarter of the end of the regular testing activities, and did not give a clear order to the supplier of these pre-research tests to give a clear order expectations and parameter specifications recommendations, which also shows that Apple's smart glasses project has not yet reached the product finalization stage.

 

 

 

However, it is true that Apple is further strengthening the research and development of its spatial computing platform. Some industry insiders said that Apple is integrating more and more interaction technologies around smart hardware on its spatial computing platform, including acquiring spatial information from various sensing interaction hardware, including spatial positioning, spatial image and spatial audio information.

 

 

 

This is also the reason for the recent rumors that Apple may launch a smart ring, as well as improving its smart headphones AirPods, and upgrading its smartwatch AppleWatch, smart tablet iPad, and other product lines. And because Apple's design ideas and concepts for these products change a lot, and the original product design is not quite in line with the original intention, but also triggered the phenomenon of a number of old designers leaving the Apple internal.

 

 

 

The other is AR glasses products, because Apple first launched VisionPro not only high price, internal design is too complex, production and quality control is difficult, mass production scale is also very difficult to improve, so the outside world that Apple in order to promote its space computing platform, certainly want to launch another lightweight space computing products.

 

 

 

The model of ordinary glasses with external virtual display and integrated open AirPods headset is not only less difficult for mass production requirements, but also easier to expand the application scene and promote it faster, in addition to providing end-user experience feedback for the iteration of its spatial computing platform and reducing the cost of platform research and development, it also attracts more users to buy the professional-grade VisionPro integrated HMD. Spatial computing products.

 

 

 

Apple's internal AR glasses prototype R & D is not later than Google, Microsoft, META and other technology giants, in fact, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, Google and other first batch of research and development of AR glasses co-model products, Apple also has its depth of testing and research, and its current spatial computing platform software R & D, there are many features are also based on AR glasses and optimization.

 

 

 

 

However, Apple is very clear about its own positioning, in the field of industrial manufacturing productivity Apple has not been dominant, Apple's more advantageous is in the creative field, so Apple for connecting the virtual reality is actually not too concerned about, Apple is more concerned about the virtual world of audio-visual interactive experience for the creative industry to provide a steady stream of support. As for these things, in the end, just for people to enjoy the cultural and creative products to provide convenience, industrial manufacturing has no substantial help, as a successful business enterprise Apple, long-term may not be too interested in, it is the same as META, do not have to become Microsoft, Google, such as the productivity of the enterprise, as long as the success of the creative business services on the line.

 

 

 

To AirPods loaded with cameras, in fact, is to do pre-research computing platform for AR glasses products to provide data collection and management verification services, and finally after the success of the algorithm, it can be directly integrated into the legs of the AR glasses, this integration would have been the industry is now doing so a route.

 

 

 

But Apple's AR glasses are not really finalized before the camera-equipped AirPods first show off to see how many tricks this camera can play, and even become a feature of Apple AirPods, can provide a lot of useful data and R & D data and experience for Apple's future product development.

 

 

 

Another reason for the outside world's concern about AirPods is that AirPods stopped changing for a year, and this product, which has an annual sales volume of 100 million units in size, Apple did not release any new AirPods in 2023.Among the AirPods series products sold on Apple's official website, AirPods (second-generation) was released in 2019, AirPods (third-generation) was released in 2021, AirPodsPro (second generation) released in 2022, AirPodsMax released in 2020.

 

 

 

And the latest news from the industry chain shows that Apple will release a new AirPods product as soon as possible, the function will increase the lossless music support and hearing aid function, the former is to meet the needs of the audio lovers, the latter is to make more industry accumulation for the future of the spatial computing platform versatility.