Vitaliy Goncharuk, CEO, Augmented Pixels:
In 2001 I was working on my first start-up for mobile phones, when the market of smartphones was just emerging, and I heard a lot of pessimistic remarks, such as “Who will be willing to have such big phones?” or “Why do we need smartphones when we have computers?”
After the mass release of Nokia, and even more with iPhone release no one asks such “stupid” questions anymore – everyone makes profit :=)
It happened that in 2010 I became a co-founder of the company in Augmented Reality sphere, where AR Glasses are the main long-term “hardware” trend that can bring a real explosion of profitability and the mass market, which will replace the smartphone market.
While working in this market I got a sense of déjà vu – I think I heard nearly everything about AR glasses, starting from «Just imagine that everyone will have AR glasses on their faces – it’s so stupid» (today a person can go through the whole day in the Bluetooth headset and conventional glasses and no one sees a problem in this) to “I’ll not believe that glasses will be cheaper than $500 by 2020» (Vuzix announced glasses for $ 500 in 2013, Google will probably release its own ones even cheaper).
And moreover, I hear this from people who are not far from technology, but from IT investors and founders of IT-companies that develop software for mobile phones.
In this situation there is nothing else to do but go on developing products and technologies ;=)
After all It will take only 1-2 years till AR Glasses will functionally substitute smartphones and will be sold for $200-300 each.
In connection with this, we expect a boom in Augmented Reality applications (binded to the space, objects, location and user’s movements), including both the creation of new services and games, and a redevelopment of the existing applications to comply with their specifications – 3D interface, as in 3D glasses almost all existing applications with 2D interfaces will look at least absurd and awkward in the environment.
Author:
Augmented Pixels – Augmented Reality Solutions
Managing director
Vitaliy Goncharuk
E-mail: ceo@augmentedpixels.com