Author | Wang San
Source | FN Business (ID: FN-24H)
The eyeglasses industry has been described as "comparable to drug trafficking", and has been criticized by a coalition of practitioners.
"You can do it on" type of debate, although simple and brutal, but skillfully shifted the argument to the other side of the "line" above. No one wants to admit that they can't, and that's especially true of tech vendors who are used to transforming traditional industries.
So why haven't there been any smart glasses that have swept the market so far?
The day before Apple's event last week, Xiaomi unveiled an exploratory version of its smart glasses. This conceptual product, which we don't know when or even if it will be mass-produced, is intended to snipe at the "possible" release of Apple's AR glasses, and to take advantage of the winds of the meta-universe.
But there was no One More Thing at this year's Apple event, which felt like running all the way to the end of the train, only to have the train stop running.
A few days after Apple's launch, Cook was once again named to Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the Year" list, and in an exclusive interview with the magazine, he didn't hide his longing for AR: "AR is a superimposition of the virtual world and the real world, and it doesn't distract from the real world and human relationships. The real world and interpersonal relationships, but also to deepen the relationship and cooperation between each other."
This is at odds with the current state of the tech world, where 2021 is the "Year of the Metaverse".
In March of this year, Roblox went public and became the "first stock in the metaverse", and its market capitalization doubled more than tenfold, completely igniting the concept of the metaverse.
In the absence of an accurate and rigorous definition of the meta-universe, all the major giants have struck out in full force, repeating the scene of the blockchain industry three years ago.
The game meta-universe, social meta-universe, office meta-universe, technology giants introduced the concept of meta-universe into various industries, and there is a gesture of mobile Internet sweeping everything.
Simplistically and broadly speaking, the metaverse is a collection of virtual spaces in time, consisting of a series of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and the Internet.
The metaverse is a virtual world parallel to the real world, and AR glasses can be one of the entrances to the metaverse.
But it doesn't mean that AR glasses are made specifically for the metaverse, nor does it mean that the metaverse concept is on fire and we have to pull the plug on the AR glasses industry.
AR glasses, or smart glasses, are not yet ripe fruit.
Medical and investment circles have circulated the same proverb: gold eyes, silver teeth, copper bones, used to describe the three gold and silver track everywhere.
Take the top of the "golden eye" track, the glasses market has the most extensive consumer demand.
On June 5, 2020, the National Health Commission released the "China Eye Health White Paper", which mentioned that "the overall incidence of myopia among children and adolescents in China is 53.6%, and the overall incidence of myopia among college students is over 90%."
Currently, the total myopic population in China is about 700 million, which is almost half of the total population. Such a huge base, for the "thin profits and high sales" provides sufficient soil, and glasses is by no means a "thin profit" industry.
In September last year, CCTV Finance reported on the cost of glasses: a pair of lenses cost only 10 yuan, and frames cost only 30 yuan.
A pair of glasses with a total price of less than a hundred dollars from the factory, after several links of purchasers, dealers, and eyeglasses stores, the retail price usually reaches several hundred or even several thousand dollars.
Such a market demand, profit margins of the industry, but become a fish in the net of intelligence, obviously not technology companies do not want to earn this money.
Take the watch, which is also a series of smart wearable devices, for example.
In 2019, Apple Watch shipments exceeded those of the entire Swiss watch industry for the first time. In just five short years, Apple Watch has sold more than 30 million, while the Swiss watch brand, which has been the birthplace of the watch and has been brilliant for a century, has only shipped a total of 21.1 million.
This is just Apple's watch sales, other cell phone manufacturers or smart device manufacturers, have also launched a mature form of smart watch products.
When intelligence transforms traditional industries, it is relentless and unstoppable.
And from the current development trend, whether it is a sweeping robot, intelligent dishwasher or pet smart hardware, compared to creating new demand, intelligentization is better at transforming on the basis of the original demand.
"Dolly more sales" of the glasses industry, is undoubtedly the natural soil of intelligence, but also the most difficult to gnaw the bones.
Take the smart glasses released by Xiaomi as an example.
Xiaomi will be this smart glasses defined as a new interaction mode of intelligent wearable terminals. In the scene shown in its promotional video, the navigation function, display notifications, double-click the glasses legs to take pictures, translate foreign languages anytime, anywhere, and other functions are more like icing on the cake, and it's hard to say that it's a blessing in disguise.
The real highlight of these glasses is overlooked by most people: the form of normal glasses, weighing only 51g.
The real barriers to technological change in eyewear are form and weight, before form factor.
When a smart wearable device appears not on the wrist, but before the "window to the soul", it naturally carries the need for decoration, and it is as strong as the need for vision correction.
Recently, Facebook and Ray-Ban Eyewear launched a smart glasses, can take pictures, videos, phone calls.
For this new product, Zuckerberg ambition is not small: "Ray-Ban Stories is just the beginning of Facebook to change the habits of people interacting with the device, the future of the technology world will no longer be centered on the phone."
Similar to several other smart glasses that have achieved mass production, the first impression of these smart glasses is that they are heavy. Some survey results show that the ideal weight of glasses is under 30 grams, more than 50 grams will be uncomfortable, it is difficult to maintain a long time to wear.
The trade-off between intelligent features and weight is the most difficult choice.
Xiaomi glasses to control the weight to 51g, is through the "optical waveguide technology" to reduce the volume of the device weight. This technology allows optical waveguide lenses to diffuse and reflect countless times with a grating structure, and eventually "reverse" the light 180, into the eye.
But the optical waveguide technology is difficult to land, has not yet reached the level of mass production, from the root of the decision that this is only a "show muscle" products.
Xiaomi has positioned the smart glasses as a standalone terminal rather than a second screen for cell phones, which means an independent computing system and a battery module to support this system. Xiaomi released data showing that this smart glasses total **** integrated 497 micro-sensors.
In the case of the size and weight of every penny, what kind of function to add, how to beautify the appearance, are obviously "Zhang Fei embroidery" type of problem. Even if the millet this difficult to mass-produce show muscle type conceptual products, from the display of functions alone, still does not meet the expectations of users for "intelligent glasses".
In addition to the technical problems, we also need to consider the "meaning of existence" proposition, the key point is the application scenarios.
Taking photos, translating, navigating, and talking, the most accessible core functions of smart glasses are almost all functions that can be realized by cell phones or watches. What manufacturers want to see the most but are most difficult to avoid is for smart glasses to become the second screen of the phone.
The ultimate vision of hardware manufacturers is to make smart glasses a replacement for smartphones.
But without a core demand to push the technology upgrade, smart glasses can only exist in the concept, even if the mass production is also difficult to break out, because before the outbreak of production capacity, price, appearance and practicality of the market level issues.
This is very similar to the current situation in the meta-universe, the future is still future, do not be too optimistic.