This text is taken from the Courrier de l’économie of August 15, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
What impact will augmented reality glasses or contact lenses have on our daily lives? When can we see this technology on the market?
It’s extremely difficult right now to predict anything about augmented, virtual, or mixed reality (which is a hodgepodge of the other two). Firms specializing in projections seem in any case very optimistic. PwC calculates, for example, that these technologies will add some $1.5 trillion in value to global GDP by 2030.
Facebook, as we know, has renamed itself Meta and hopes that the enthusiasm for these immersive digital worlds will give a second wind to its growth, now that its social network seems to have reached a peak in popularity.
There is certainly a fundamental movement started by large companies on the side of continuous training and technical support. Accenture has just purchased 60,000 headsets to facilitate remote training for its new employees. Boeing believes it can reduce the time it takes to train its workers by 75% with this technology. At home, Mercedes-Benz and other manufacturing companies have adopted mixed reality to facilitate the work of their specialized technicians, who can help people in the field to carry out complex tasks live, without having to be on site.
In short, virtual and augmented reality is still in its infancy, but we have just found a first credible application for it.
It now remains to develop the technology to make it more accessible to the general public. This is what not only Meta and Microsoft (with its HoloLens) are trying to do, but if we trust the rumors, Apple and Google as well. Glasses that would not be too bulky and that would be sold at an affordable price could largely replace the smart phone that you constantly take out of your pocket when it emits (too) many alerts.
It goes even further: the American company Mojo has developed contact lenses called Vision, which are capable of displaying text in the wearer’s field of vision. A runner could see at all times out of the corner of his eye his route, the distance covered, his pace, etc.
The technology has just been finalized and its commercialization is expected in the coming months.
In short, we do not yet know to what extent augmented reality and virtual reality will change our daily lives. What we do know is that they arouse extraordinary interest among the tech giants.
One would assume, as they used to say about the Nordics, that the best is yet to come. But like the Nordics, there is no guarantee that it will be a success…