An Effort to do some noise reduction.

I'm offering a timeline of recent events. I think the AR space is heating up significantly, and someone is going to make a move soon. 

If we are priced taking into account the enormous number of subscriptions that the near eye display can enable.... that's great thing. (The last presentation made noises about a subscription-like model for LiDAR)

...will the ultimate valuation of the NED vertical take into consideration the enormous potential for sales of subscriptions through these devices? My bet is yes. 

In my humble opinion, that would make it worth more than Activision. (That's how I see it, you make up your own mind.)

March 2021

• “We believe that MR/AR products could replace all display-equipped electronics in the long term” (CultofMac)

September 2021

• Josh Miller -- From Microsoft (and before that Microvision) Becomes director of Display Design at META/Facebook 
  LinkedIn
• FACEBOOK/META does Rayban (see list of links below.)
• Microsoft to buy back 60 Billion in shares

This is a particularly interesting month. 

October 28, 2021

• Investor Place Interview 15:10 - 15:15 RAYBAN Mentioned 

• Barrons: Apple could replace iPhone with Augmented Reality Devices
  This might be something to ignore, but the Barrons has good credibility and Ming-Chi Kuo has excellent credibiliy in calling Apples moves and products.
  
  Applescoop has him at 80+% reliability -- when dealing with a company that is as secretive as Apple, that's very impressive. (His run of good calls is MUCH longer than what is on the linked page

December 28, 2021

• Facebook Poaching Engineers from Apple (MSN)
• Apple Insider: Apple paying $180,000 bonuses to prevent engineers from defecting.
• IDB Apple-Meta Poaching War

The development must be viewed through the prism of the ongoing talent war between Apple and Meta, formerly Facebook. According to reports so far, Meta has been poaching key engineers from Apple’s silicon, augmented reality, wearable, hardware and software divisions for the past few months.

January 6, 2022

• Facebook Giving up on AR/VR OS (Fudzilla)
• The VERGE Facebook Canceling XROS (Announced)    

This tells me that they're in a bigger hurry than they used to be, or things have heated up and they need to accelerate their previous delivery targets.

If you can own your own OS you can have more control. If you do it faster -- you may have to share with someone else, but there may be additional benefits to being faster. (Android has been the platform so far) 

January 10, 2022

• Facebook Poaching MSFT AR engineers (Wall Street Journal)

January 18, 2022

• Microsoft to buy Activision $67 Billion

January 25, 2022 (Thanks S2upid!)

SPIE AR/VR Special Event

---

Maybe this explains better?

Big Tech AR GAME owner:

"We can make HUGE money with subscriptions to these games."
MicroVision Representative:

"I know you want to buy our Near Eye vertical based only on the "widget" value it has.

We are going to sell it to you based on the widget value PLUS the value you will get from being able to sell future subscriptions. (and ads, and in-app purchases...)

In the case of Activision, that's $68.7 Billion for 31 games.

Steam has 50,000 games. It looks like the fruit company wants to make near eye display replace all the screens... your move.

{maybe we need to focus on ads... just imagine how intrusive Facebook could be when it highlights the business it's advertising as you walk past it.}

---

Facebook-Ray Ban Glasses (PR started in September 2021)

FACEBOOK RAYBAN SEPTEMBER 2021 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uOFWU4o3tw

 

https://www.engadget.com/facebook-ray-ban-stories-smart-glasses-ar-160006477.html

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/facebook-ray-ban-stories-smart-glasses-review.html 

 

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/09/21/seeing-past-the-cool-facebooks-new-smart-glasses/

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/15/techscape-smart-glasses-facebook

 

https://news.yahoo.com/facebook-ray-ban-stories-review-114325879.html

 

https://time.com/6096715/facebook-ray-ban-smart-glasses/

 

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/09/09/ray-ban-stories-zuckerberg-glasses-orig.cnn-business 9/9/2021

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-releases-ray-ban-smart-glasses-rcna1951

 

https://www.accessnow.org/facebook-ray-ban-stories-smart-glasses-privacy-review/

 

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/09/facebooks-first-smart-glasses-make-the-case-for-face-worn-wearables/

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/09/facebook-ray-ban-stories-smart-glasses/

 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebookray-ban-stories-smartglasses-everything-you-need-to-know/

 

https://mashable.com/review/facebook-rayban-stories-smart-glasses-review

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray-Ban_Stories

The original investing premise for Microvision: Everyone wants a smaller device and a bigger screen

STILL HOLDS TRUE.

Just add some LiDAR into the mix.

The video (I'm about 4 minutes in so far, is a great explanation of AR, and how MicroVision can create more screen real estate.)

AUGMENTED reality Near Eye Displays are worth at least what LiDAR will be worth.

I think a LOT more. 

We are likely in my opinion to get more value in the near term from LiDAR.

What's it worth? 

My recent price target was Minimum of LAZR X 2 Market cap. 

I stand by all my valuation estimates still and I'm happily holding.

APPLE, GOOGLE, AMAZON & MICROSOFT are ALL WORKING ON AUGMENTED REALITY AND SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES....

 Four Companies are all working on two things as "the next big things" Augmented Reality and Self driving vehicles.

Combined they are worth 6.921 Trillion
Together they have 340 billion in cash

If they have a bidding competition for key technology that will give them an edge against the others, how much would they be willing to pay? 

Is 20 Billion too much? (That's about $130/share)

Whats the difference between Niantic and IVAS?

What's 1,000,000,000 / 120,000?

According to my calculations the Niantic heads up we got last week is 8,333 times better than the IVAS news.

There have been more than a billion downloads of Pokemon Go, and the IVAS go-ahead is for 120,000 units.

Pokemon Go is still going strong -- that's Niantic.

Grayson is pretty on top of things.

WATCH THIS BEFORE YOU GO FURTHER -->>>

If you haven't done so, watch this video that he posted last year comparing Digilens to MicroVision. (If it walks like a duck... you know the saying.) HERE
                               

<<<--- WATCH THIS BEFORE YOU GO FURTHER

Don't get me wrong, the IVAS news is FANTASTIC -- it proves the value, proves it works, proves that it's tough enough to fit Military Standards (Look HERE) The dual news flash... wow. 

But the 120,000 units and the volume from that contract isn't the big news.

Volume of production would be the big news. Niantic is that. (Not yet confirmed, I know, but I'm confident it's right.... whether or not you are confident is up to you.)

Pokemon Go information from Business of APPS 

The game launched in July 2016, and became not just a smash hit game, but a global cultural phenomenon; in the summer of 2016, it seemed as if there was no getting away from Pokémon GO. There was even a Pokémon GO Frappuccino! How many games get a drink named after them at Starbucks? How many games inspire 200,000 Spotify playlists?

Pokémon GO Overview

Launched	July 2016
Parent company	Niantic
HQ	San Francisco, California
Key people	Tatsuo Nomura (Pokémon GO director), John Hanke (Niantic CEO)

Key Pokémon GO User Statistics

Cumulative Pokémon GO downloads
September 2016	500 million
February 2017	650 million
July 2017	750 million
May 2018	800 million
March 2019	1 billion

If you don't believe in Pokemon, you don't need to. Of course they wouldn't build single-purpose eyewear. You just need to believe in "walking around games" and Niantic is great at it, and so is UNREAL -- who builds their sofware engine for everyone.

Niantic VS IVAS

******************************************************************

You can change the static variables, but the share float doesn't change often, the tax rate is based on Large Tech companies, MicroVision expenditures are a guess -- actually all of this is a guess, but it is a way for you to play with some of the numbers.

When I test IVAS: (My numbers - you do your numbers.)
Augmented Reality Headsets Produced = 120000
How much will MVIS profit from each?  = 1000
% of AR headsets you think will use it? 100
PE when this happens? = 80

When I test Niantic - the consumer market: (My numbers - you do your numbers)
Augmented Reality headsets produced:     250000000 (250 Million)
How much will MVIS profit from each:   10
% of AR headsets you think will use it:     80
PE when this happens:                                80

Use your own numbers, and remember that buyouts happen with substantially different numbers. Calculating Buyout using EBITDA (To set the buyout number here, I'd guess at increases in sales, average the next five years set expenditures and tax rate to zero, and use 5-15 as the PE. -- remember this is a single vertical.)

(These numbers are without commas, because commas will make the calculator break. Javascript is a pain in the ass.)

What's YOUR price target? (Erase the "*" in the green space and pick your number.) My baseline is $5 ea / 90% of AR Headsets/ PE of 80
How much will MicroVison will profit from each AR Set?
What % of AR Headsets sold do you think will use it?
What do you think the PE of the stock will be when this happens?
Microvision Shares Outstanding { Static }
Augmented Reality Headsets produced (annual)
Total Microvision expenditures annual { Static }
Effective Tax Rate (%)  { Static }
* * * * * * * * *
Number of AR headsets with MVIS you expect
Total Earnings Before Taxes you expect
Microvision Earnings After Taxes
Microvision Net Earnings Per Share
Microvision Price Per Share that you expect

Hololens 2 Display Module

Microsoft built Hololens around this display. MicroVision enables the key component.

Thanks to S2upid posting in the r/MVIS reddit board.

 

The Beats Exercise

Beats sold to Apple for 3.2 Billion. Why?

This was a mysterious acquisition when it happened. Not too difficult to make a new kind of headset, but that was what everyone saw when they purchased it.

Why did Apple buy Beats?


Apple's Beats Acquisition has already paid off

Indeed, Apple Music would launch in June 2015, and amass 10 million subscribers by January 2016 -- 20 million paid users that December. Less than two years later, and after some redesigns, it would double its tally to 40 million. Sure, the company hasn't caught Spotify globally, and it may never be able to. But in the US, Apple reportedly has more paying users than its biggest rival.

The reason for the price wasn't obvious --- but it was there.

It was not for the hardware, but for the number of subscriptions it could sell.

So, you need to ask yourself, how many paying subscriptions could MicroVision's technology enable?

Microsoft office is a subscription.

In the world of AR there will likely be subscription services for education, games, business applications, or additional fees just to have AR service.

Interactive projection(or display only) could improve the appeal media subscriptions significantly.

Can they sell in a few years 20 million subscriptions? There's your 3.8 Billion. ($27/share)


Secret History of Beats

“By 2013, Beats Electronics was a distressed business by any standard,” said the late PrivCo chief Sam Hamadeh. “The company was in a corner until Carlyle stepped in.” 

The Carlyle investment also gave Beats the funds it needed to keep expanding. That was especially important given the focus on its new streaming service. Beats Music celebrated its official launch in January 2014 with a concert at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles, fronted by Dre, Diddy, Eminem, Nas, and Ice Cube. Inside, superstars from Drake to Pink mingled with label chiefs and talent agency executives at the oversubscribed show.

There were no reports of Apple executives in the crowd, but the computer giant was clearly watching. On May 8, the Financial Times reported that Apple had agreed to purchase Beats for $3.2 billion; that night, the grainy YouTube video of Dr. Dre’s impromptu celebration lit up the Internet.

******three weeks later, though, the deal went through—for a final price of $3 billion. “No traditional valuation measure applied to Beats as a business justifies the price,”

It seems pretty clear to me that it was purchased for getting subscriptions to increase. If it already paid off for the increase from doubling the number of paid users from 20 million to 40 million --- you have to ask yourself can the results from MicroVision's Near Eye Display OR their Interactive Display result in 20 million paid subscriptions? (I believe the answer is clearly yes it can -- significantly more than that.) so those 20 million paid subscribers are worth 

The Market doesn't Know All.

The Near Eye display for Hololens....

Microsoft lied about who invented this. They hired some of MicroVision's engineers and added their own adjustments, but MicroVision invented it.

There is no other way to accurately describe this. (I make the case for that here.)
 
Microsoft is welcome to rebut this and I'll happily post it.

There is a reason that they would lie about it: That is that the value of it is extraordinary and they WANT to get credit for it.

In their own words they built Hololens AROUND the display.

I do not think that it was to save money on purchasing the company. The current market cap of the company is pocket change for a company the size of Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they want credit.

The shareholders who diligently researched this did it right. They should have been rewarded for their diligence in figuring this out back in February of 2019 (MicroVision Reddit Board)

If they think they can buy MicroVision on the cheap they'll get a no-votes from me.

There are a number of other companies eager to get into Augmented Reality, and this display is going to enable it in many places. There is no other AR display that is even close.

I saw Meta right before I saw MicroVision's Nomad. Nomad was MUCH better than Meta at the time, and was 20 years older.



Demand the VALUE of this from whoever buys this company.... it's very high.

THERE IT IS, MVIS IN HOLOLENS2

The Definitive Proof We have been waiting for

Microvision's Tech in Hololens2

 

Great post and story on Reddit, by poster "s2upid" Thank you Jay!Microvision parts found within....

Image Collection Here

I thank him for the initiative and spending a not insignificant amount of his own money to obtain this proof.


Here is Alex Kipman saying great things about the display and Claiming that Microsoft Invented it.

If you had been following closely you would have had near proof of Microvision in Hololens last October.  The picture for the video above, on the right, you can see Microvision's logo several times.


Check out the beginning of Microsoft's Announcement of Hololens 2. If you were really following Microvision at this point, Feb of 2019, you SAW Microvision's tech at this point, but Microsoft claimed it.




Kipman talking about "Microsoft's Display"





Apple AR Glasses

Microsoft has made great strides in AR to be sure. I think it is is going to be a tool that improves things in astonishing ways. It will also be an amazing new toy.

But, given the way Microsoft has treated Microvision. I'm holding out for the Apple AR glasses. I'm quite confident it will use the same display.

They built this device around Microvision's display and they NEED it to produce this device. 

Bens Blog on this Reveal

If my read on the timing is correct this is the APRIL 2017 Contract, which also states that Microvision can sell it to whomever they want after the end of development.

I expect that when the company is sold, this will be included in any buyer's abilities as well. 

Any startup who had developed a similar display, with a similar contract would have a market cap in multiple billions of dollars -- and Microvision is NOT a one-trick pony. (My opinion.... do your own due diligence, and your own homework.)

Let the bidding begin.

Cool. 
This is done with the camera so far.

If you want to use gesture control in a room... or in a room with multiple people then you're going to need a high-resolution LiDAR to pick up the gestures accurately and distinguish between people who should be able to control the smart house and those who shouldn't be able to.



Google Gesture Control

More and more, tech companies are leaning on AI to solve the equation for AR wearables in terms of form factor and functionality. Even Microsoft is blending the AI approach of ARKit and ARcore in detecting surfaces for the new scene understanding capabilities of the HoloLens 2. The software approach could be the key in arriving at smartglasses that are slim enough to wear every day instead of just in the comfort of the user's home or office.

Apple AR Glasses

Business Insider

2020

Catadioptric?

Basically it's bouncing a projection off something else.... which is what any AR system will have to do.

So, this word doesn't do anything to necessarily include or exclude MVIS's display, but I think Apple will want the best, and I'm quite sure that what Microvision has developed outclasses anything else out there.


A catadioptric optical system is one where refraction and reflection are combined in an optical system, usually via lenses (dioptrics) and curved mirrors (catoptrics).

Wikipedia Catadioptric

Spiderman

Thanks Fuzzie

I have it starting at the interesting part, cut off the first 20 seconds.

People are going to flip out when they realize that this ISN'T science fiction.

Nothing to Save the Smart phone market?

Thanks Joe

Then again, some of us know better than that.


Business Insider -- more at the source.




Others, like Samsung, Huawei, and Motorola, are forging ahead in the smartphone market, with bets that new technologies like high-speed 5G wireless internet and foldable screens will entice people to upgrade. Samsung alone is expected to ship this year a 5G-compatible version of the Samsung Galaxy S10, as well as the delayed Galaxy Fold foldable smartphone.

***********************
Companies including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Samsung, Google-backed startup Magic Leap, and even "Fortnite" developer Epic Games all consider AR to be the next great computing interface. Microsoft and Magic Leap already have AR goggles on the market, with Apple said to be working on "smart glasses" that could be unveiled as soon as this year.

It's pretty clear that all of these companies are looking to AR as the next big gold rush in tech, following the slow stagnation of the smartphone industry.

They may be right — it's hard to imagine it not happening, given the sheer scale of the investment that every company is making in the market.

Magic Leap, Facebook, Google, Microsoft...

The whole article is interesting. It tells me that Microsoft is really ahead of the curve with display, and some of their competitors really don't know that they are yet.

Reminding me of how Apple had developers working on content that will work with glasses (while working for iPhones and iPads.)

The article teases "When" but doesn't do a good job of answering it... although there are two very important take-aways:

THE FUTURE OF COMPUTERS IS SPATIAL

The people and companies above, and others like them, will have to listen closely to successfully navigate the technological shift over the next decade.

Everything that is on a flat screen is second to something that is in 3D --- Give it 20 years and kids will look at flat screens like a lot of us look at black and white televisions or rotary phones.

And, this is a process that is going to involve numerous upgrade cycles over a decade or more, this is all just beginning. Like tube televisions or LCD screens, I think the laser near eye display is going to be the best solution for a decade or more... 


Fast Company

What we really want to know is what we always want to know: How soon? When will the “Magicverse,” as Magic Leap calls it, be as accessible as picking up a svelte pair of XR glasses from my night table and putting them on?

A better question is how quickly the technology is moving toward a more refined experience, and what challenges remain. To find out, I asked experts from various companies that will play big roles in the developing XR ecosystem. (Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity.)

****

It’s about all those digital layers working together and providing you information. And that information could be a bus route. Or if you’re an engineer it could be about understanding what the sewage system looks like underneath the city. These functional layers are almost like radio stations in a way. You can tune into the transportation layer, which might say here’s where all the buses are, here’s where all the Ubers are, here’s where all the trains are, here’s where all the flying Ubers are!

“But then you might tune into the entertainment one. There will be dozens, hundreds, thousands of the entertainment ones alone. (LAYERS) You know we love to be entertained as humans. So you could tune into the Game of Thrones channel and you’re walking down the Embarcadero and there’s a dragon flying and you’re seeing it and I’m seeing it and we’re interacting with it and we’re having this shared experience. You think of Pokémon Go, but much more realistic and much more engaging because now you’re able to see in three dimensions that character happening. That’s what we mean when we talk about ‘the Magicverse.’ It’s all about serving that digital content.”

“[Customers] did tell us a number of things we could improve on with the HoloLens 2, and the ones we chose to concentrate on were immersion, comfort, and usefulness out of the box.

“Looking forward we will continue to invest in those same three categories. What you’ll see in the next version is even more immersiveness, more comfort, and more applications that have more value. It’s relatively easy to do any one of those things but it’s hard to do all three.

“You can make it more immersive by including more powerful displays, but that’s going to make the device bigger, heavier, hotter, and have a shorter battery life. You can make it more comfortable by making it weigh less, but then you give up computing power. So it’s relatively easy to do any one of those things–the challenge is achieving advancements in all three areas. 

FOR FACEBOOK, AR/VR’S KILLER APP IS TOGETHERNESS

Facebook is thought to have some of the best computer vision and spatial computing talent in the industry working on social experiences in VR (like Spaces), and on AR experiences for smartphone apps like Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook. Facebook’s first consumer product, the Portal home speaker/camera, offers some AR experiences–expect the company to add more in the future. The company owns Oculus, which develops VR headsets, but it’s likely exploring options for releasing more of its own AR hardware products in the future.

*****

It’ll be consumers that decide these things over time. The people and companies above, and others like them, will have to listen closely to successfully navigate the technological shift over the next decade.

Planting Seeds, Rolling dice

While everyone is focused on Hololens, I just remind myself that there's a lot of room in Augmented Reality that is beyond Hololens. The makers of those systems will be looking for the best display. 

There's another company that has a lot of patents that mention MicroVision.

Remember they're getting developers to create AR content BEFORE they have a specifically AR device to use to do it.


AppleInsider
Cook claimed he's "never been more optimistic" about where Apple is going, according to Bloomberg. The company saw a rough December quarter in which iPhone sales fell 15 percent year-over-year, and most analysts don't expect them to resume growth until this fall's models ship.

The executive didn't elaborate on what future products he meant, but Apple is known to be working on an augmented reality headset and self-driving car technology. Both are potential gambles, given intense competition in the autonomous car space, and the absence of any affordable, mainstream AR headsets. Products like the Magic Leap One and Microsoft's HoloLens have so far targeted niche audiences like businesses.

Facebook -- Enterprise AR

I'm pretty sure all of the AR systems (careful word choice --'system') created will be display agnostic. Different companies will build various systems of software, sensors, content, and input. They will then use the best of whatever accessories will be available in the market.

The leaders now are each going to try to become the standard, to become at the start the most accepted version will be huge. Some other player may well appear and work to compete with Microsoft on price -- or on content. As we have seen many times in the past, those players who have chosen the right content concentration may beat a superior technology.

There will be room for multiple players in the field -- some may produce entertainment over education, or consumer over enterprise.... eventually I suspect it will be like Apple vs Android or Mac vs PC. A couple of strong contenders -- but there are a lot of them now.


The payoff for whichever company dominates in this field is going to be HUGE. It will be bigger than dominating the personal computing surge in the 1980's.

Selling the best near eye display (and having the best sensors) will be like selling shovels to gold miners.


Facebook is in the race for "enterprise AR" and they have a significant presence in Redmond. Their existence in Redmond Washington is an "open secret."

They don't advertise their presence at all. A couple of years ago I was given a heads-up about their facility there and I stopped at it. Not only were the buildings unmarked -- just normal looking office buildings.... but there was no indication on any person or any vehicle what was there. (No Facebook Stickers, Logos, Shirts, no labeled visitor spot.. nothing of the kind.)

I took a couple of pictures.

A couple of hours later, my phone asked me if I wanted to label the pictures I took at Oculus.

Facebook is growing at a rapidly in Redmond.


Mashable

Facebook wants to sell more virtual reality headsets to businesses.

The company is working on an "enterprise edition" of its Oculus Go and Oculus Quest headsets, according to a new job posting that was first discovered by Variety.

The job listing is for a software engineer position on Oculus' AR/VR Enterprise team. Though light on specifics, it says enterprise editions of its headsets will launch in 2019.

"Starting with VR, we are building an Oculus Go and Oculus Quest Enterprise edition expected to launch in 2019," the description says.

Facebook has previously dabbled in this space. The company has offered Oculus Business, Rift bundles meant to appeal to businesses, since 2017. But a dedicated enterprise version of its hardware would be a significant expansion for Oculus. The job description suggests Facebook is working on partnerships with "enterprise-developer ecosystems" and other software platforms in order to create business-specific features.

Pokemon Go Hololens

Clearly there will be no consumer interest in Hololens and AR.

The top video is a peek at Pokemon go in Hololens. (unlikely to be through the device itself, but rendered on another computer screen.) Remember when you're seeing it in person it will all be 3D -- a dimension that can't be appreciated looking at it on screen.

The bottom video is Pokemon Go players chasing some Pokemonster through the streets of Taipei.

Nintendo Soup

Apple Preparing for life after iPhone

Interesting stuff.

As you read this, remember that Apple just created its first head of AR Marketing.

They're also talking here about a lot of video streaming.

Writing off display-only is WAY premature.

Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. AAPL -0.22% is shaking up leadership and reordering priorities across its services, artificial intelligence, hardware and retail divisions as it works to reduce the company’s reliance on iPhone sales.

The changes, which can be traced back to last year, have included high-profile hires, noteworthy departures, meaningful promotions and consequential restructurings. They have rattled rank-and-file employees unaccustomed to frequent leadership changes and led Apple to put several projects on hold while new managers are given a chance to reassess priorities, according to people familiar with the matter.

The primary reasons for the shifts vary by division. But collectively, they reflect Apple’s efforts to transition from an iPhone-driven company into one where growth flows from services and potentially transformative technologies.

*************

“This is a sign the company is trying to get the formula right for the next decade,” said Gene Munster, a longtime Apple analyst and managing partner at venture-capital firm Loup Ventures. “Technology is evolving, and they need to continue to tweak their structure to be sure they’re on the right curve.”

*************

Apple spent $14.24 billion on research and development last year, a 23% increase from the year prior. Though it continues to work on projects in the augmented reality, autonomous vehicle and health sectors, it hasn’t yet released a major new product in those areas. Sales of its latest gadgets—Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePod—have been mixed, and none have offered the pricing power or volumes of the iPhone, one of the best-selling products in history.

Mr. Cook, who prides himself on his long-term management focus, has been anticipating the maturation of the smartphone industry since as early as 2010 and planning for how to grow as phone sales slow, former employees say. Apple this year stopped reporting the number of iPhones it sells, a move many observers interpreted as an end of the smartphone salad days.

Though the iPhone still contributes about two-thirds of Apple sales, the company has encouraged investors to focus on a growing services business, which includes streaming-music subscriptions, app-store sales and mobile payments. Services are expected to top $50 billion in sales by fiscal 2020 and contribute more than about 60% of Apple’s total revenue growth over five years, according to Morgan Stanley , which estimates the iPhone fueled 85% of growth during the prior five years.

Zuckerberg's AR vision

Oculus is right down the Street from MicroVision.

It's in an unmarked building. (I found the building, took a picture of it, and ironically, my phone asked if I wanted to publish the photo taken at Oculus.)

They are planning to put more facilities there.

Not sure if everything is connected, but it is a very interesting coincidence.
This was before Oculus Moved to Redmond  (or as they started)

Kid needs a ride, haven't been able to look at all of this yet.

Seeing as this is from 2015, I expect that some of this vision has changed.

2015 06 22 MARK'S VISION by on Scribd

Apple's first Head of AR marketing

I'll make a wild guess and say that we'll probably hear about what he's up to pretty soon if they're making this public.



" Frank Casanova, has a new title: "Senior Director, Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple Augmented Reality." 

Bloomberg

9to5Mac

Engadget   -- Shows how important the tech is.

Microsoft AR Recent Patent

Joe sent an article this morning with a couple of interesting pictures from a recent Microsoft patent.

The glasses at the top are Osterhaut glasses. (A version after what I managed to try.) The amount of hardware they had resting on your nose was too much for comfort.

This article also features some interesting interface devices, like a bracelet and rings. (As cool as the glasses might be, we're probably not going to want to make gestures in groups of people to control our glasses, but fiddling with a ring or wrist controller wouldn't make anyone feel too weird.)

ONMSFT



Beyond shrinking the overall size of HoloLens, Microsoft’s patent also details new multi-use cases for use of AR outside of the previous work, lab, warehouse and home showcases the company used to highlight.

In this latest patent filing, Microsoft developers are sorta of resurrecting the spirit of Google Glass in corner mounted AR information but the company is also aiming to introduce additional wearables such as smart rings that should help with navigating augmented UI’s and information.

Hololens Creator

AR is coming, it's going to be huge, and it's nice to be in the spot where you have the best AR display.

Windows Central



The phone is already dead. People just haven't realized. The potential of these devices is that they could one day replace your phones, TVs, and all these screens. Once your apps, videos, information, and even social life are projected into your line of sight, you won't need any other screen-based gadgetry … [it's] the 'natural conclusion' of mixed reality.