According to TechCrunch, Ficus Kirkpatrick, Facebook's head of AR business, confirmed to the media that AR glasses are being developed. But Kirkpatrick also said: "We have no AR products to announce now, but we have a lot of talented people who are doing cutting-edge research and hope that these studies will work in the future."
Facebook has recently shown its light on hardware devices. Although the outside world does not trust its devices with microphones and photographic lenses, the company is indeed moving from social media to consumer electronics.
Recalling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference in April 2017 that it will take 5 to 7 years for AR glasses, and Facebook is undoubtedly accelerating its pace; Business Insider discovered in August of the same year Facebook is applying for a patent on AR glasses.
In the battlefield of VR, AR, MR, Magic Leap, Thalmic Labs and other companies have released their first products, Microsoft's HoloLens is considered as the leader of the industry, and Google Lens is still targeting enterprise users. Development, Apple's footsteps have not stopped, the company has acquired hardware developers such as Akonia Holographics and Vrvana, Apple analyst Guo Mingdi even predicted that Apple AR glasses will report in 2 years.
But Facebook ’s difficulty in entering the hardware equipment field may not be in development or sales, but in the data protection problems that have plagued the company for the past one or two years. If Facebook really launches an excellent AR glasses in the future, it may be necessary to think about Convince users that their profile data is safe.