Facebook Has Abandoned The Metaverse Concept, But Apple Can Make it Happen, Here's How!

Social media users and the business world now have a basic understanding of what a metaverse is. That's because Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been using the term  investor call for a year and  Facebook has since changed the name to Meta. Various companies such as Disney, Bumble, Tencent,  Warner Music Group, and others  followed Zuckerberg's lead to use "metaverse" as a strategic topic for Internet discussions based on virtual objects and avatars over the next few years. 

However, while Meta has commercialized virtual reality (VR) with its headset and Oculus software suite and has done in-depth research into augmented reality (AR) for nearly a decade, Metaverse's active user base  is still relatively small. . Less than 10 million users. Among various successful social media platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, Instagram is receiving the most attention from the meta in the field of augmented reality.

Nearly 400,000 of Instagram's 1.3 billion users use the Meta Spark AR tool to create AR effects for the platform. But these relatively small numbers don't scale with the widespread hype surrounding the idea of ​​a metaverse in recent months.

Regardless of  whether a company has a direct path to the metaverse, regardless of the number of real users, the idea has finally caught up with the business community. Among the giant tech leaders that can truly embrace the metaverse, Apple stands out for its track record of attracting skeptical consumers to new ways of computing. The most recent sign that Apple is ready to lead the transition to the metaverse comes from Apple analyst Mindchi Kuo. He said Apple will unveil its own  wearable augmented reality by the end of next year.

Apple plans to launch it as the first portal for Metaverse

In Kuo`s latest TF International Securities report, he writes that the device will be “launched in 4Q22 [and] will be equipped with two processors. The higherend processor will have similar computing power as the M1 for Mac, whereas the lowerend processor will be in charge of sensorrelated computing.” The headset will, according to Kuo, also have the ability to deliver VR experiences. The Taiwanbased analyst has become renowned for using his supply chain sources in Asia to deliver early and usually accurate predictions of what Apple has coming in its product pipeline. In 2014, Kuo was among the first to accurately forecast the release of the Apple Watch, the company`s first wearable. 

Although Meta and other companies have spent years marketing their versions of the metaverse, Apple has largely been absent, other than offering a mobile AR development tool called ARKit. However, in 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook  repeatedly emphasized that AR is the company's "core technology." But in keeping with the tradition of allowing other companies to make  early public beta bugs and then develop improved versions of  existing ideas, Apple is set to stand out in the metaverse with wearables that can be as ubiquitous as AirPods, and earlier iPhones.

Apple is ideally positioned to replicate the success of the iPhone  by replacing smartphones with AR.

The migration to the metaverse is slow but gaining momentum. One of Big Tech's rivals when it comes to virtualizing everything is Alphabet, which manufactured the doomed Google Glass AR wearable in 2013. Alphabet is currently embedding AR into its Google search engine. Amazon is also starting to include AR product displays in some of its ecommerce offerings. And almost everyone is ahead of Microsoft with the strictly business-oriented industrial and military HoloLens AR headsets. 

To date, technical constraints have delayed the creation of lightweight augmented reality smart glasses for mainstream use. The most recent examples of  major tech companies combining true AR capabilities with trendsetting styles are Snap and  Spectacles wearable glasses. However, this device has not been widely available to the general public and is still mostly considered experimental. 

If what Apple is developing is a meaningful update to what Snap and others have accomplished, it could deliver on Apple's plan to "replace iPhones with AR in 10 years," Kuo said.