Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long resented Facebook being kept at arm’s length in the mobile era. Apple and Google have been careful to prevent the various Facebook applications becoming too entrenched into the core iOS and Android experience, for fear of becoming simply the dumb pipe, and Zuckerberg has not forgotten this.
The much maligned rebrand to Meta, to signify the company’s focus on the metaverse opportunity, signaled the clear desire to create the next computing platform. Facebook had surged to the fore in Web 1.0, but the mobile-centric Web 2.0 had seen the core platforms conspicuously move against Zuckerberg, and so the creation and proliferation of the next big thing in consumer electronics has existential stakes, in the CEO’s view at least.
The Orion AR glasses are the closest Meta has come to proving it is on to something. This is not a consumer product; but positioned as an ‘internal’ developer kit. Unfortunately, they illustrate the walls that Apple and Google have erected, as the glasses themselves require a ‘puck’ device that could (and really should) be natively integrated into a smartphone itself.
This is the central tension for Orion, named after the great hunter of the Greek legends. The form factor could be greatly simplified by moving the puck functionality into a smartphone, but Apple and Google will not let this happen without a fight. Still, Meta is keen for a scalp, and there is blood in the water in the US antitrust scene – with Google currently submitting remedy proposals arguing the case for not breaking it into pieces.
The puck houses various compute and connectivity components that could not be housed inside the already somewhat chunky glasses frames and legs. Miniaturization will eventually enable those functions to be baked into the glasses, but in the meantime, most users’ smartphones would be on-hand and ready to alleviate the load – if Apple or Google would let Meta do so.
In the meantime, the puck is necessary to provide the equivalent of native OS functionality. Consumers are already used to carrying their smartphones around, so perhaps eventually replacing them with a puck equivalent is not too onerous, should the likes of Orion be able to convince users that they could feasibly go without a smartphone when using something like Orion.
Consumer enthusiasm for the smartphone form factor has declined. These black mirrors are about as advanced as their physical shape enables, and while some folding capabilities have added a new wrinkle to the line-up, the flagships are fairly interchangeable these days. On-device AI-based functions might squeeze another generation or two out of the roadmap, but there is an air that the time is right for moving on from the smartphone, in time.
Of course, sci-fi speculation makes fools of most of us. The current Orion user experience also requires a wristband to provide gesture controls for the user interface, in a manner that beneficially does not require the user to hold their hands out in front of the camera array. This is apparently a much better experience than the likes of Apple’s Vision Pro, based on reviews from those select few granted access to Orion.
But, this still requires a trifecta of devices, all of which require batteries to run. This leaves plenty of room for charging headaches, or forgetting to grab one of the three while rushing out of a door. For the likes of Orion to become the direct replacement for the smartphone, a lot of advances need to be made in short order, and with a reported two-hour battery life, charging and power supply is the biggest hill to climb.
Thankfully, Zuckerberg has very deep pockets, and due to the organizational structure of Meta and its voting shares, has no fear of being overruled, should he desire to throw another $63 billion at the Reality Labs venture. As long as Zuckerberg wants to finance this generational foray, he can.
With Apple and Google being so clearly in the crosshairs of global regulators, Meta might not have to wait too long for the tectonic plates to shift. An Android excised from Google would give it more room to maneuver, and an Apple forced to enable third-party hardware access via the EU is a sliver of hope for breaking into that walled garden.
But Orion will not be the device. It is far too expensive; at around $10,000 per unit. Meta says it could have sold these, but has instead chosen to improve on the design. This cost is largely attributed to the bespoke silicon carbide lenses, which were chosen for their light refraction properties – which reportedly allow for a much wider and more convincing field of view, when the Micro LED projectors fire light into the waveguides.
Seven on-board cameras are available to track objects in space, with at least two video-capture cameras baked into the final design but not actually in use. In a similar manner, there is an integrated ‘cellular’ modem, which is not active, which is presumably housed in the puck.
The second-generation Orion platform will reportedly move away from silicon carbide lenses, will have thinner frames, improved screen resolution and brightness, and be priced similarly to smartphones. This is what the Meta PR blitz has said to the outsiders it allowed to experience Orion, but it was vague on the time frame – in ‘a few years.’
This gives Apple some time to figure out the product strategy for the Vision Pro. At $3,500, the headset is far too expensive for mass market use, but Apple can at least claim to have a product available for purchase today – unlike Meta, and to some extent Google too.
Google is pursuing partnerships with Samsung and the infamous Magic Leap, but how different would this market look today if Google had had more backbone and stuck with the Google Glass experiment for the past decade? Google launched the consumer version in 2014, but discontinued it in 2015, after backlash.
Google persisted with an enterprise version until 2023, however. In fact, the enterprise space has been host to a number of impressive AR advances, from the likes of Microsoft and Vuzix, but these have garnered little interest from the technology press or general public. There is a niche for these products for field technicians, assembly line workers, and general training functions, but these vendors are under no delusion that these devices could or should be worn for the majority of our waking lives – thankfully.
In the consumer market, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses proved surprisingly popular, with their audio-based user interface. While housing cameras, these $300 glasses do not rely on a screen. They are tethered to a smartphone, and are likely being sold at a loss. Still, these units proved that there was consumer appetite for the form factor, as an extension of the smartphone. We explored these and the Meta Quest 3 headset back in October 2023.
These devices represent a privacy nightmare, for the general public. This was one of the main critiques of Google Glass, but these cameras with native cellular connectivity could provide the likes of Google and Meta (the largest digital advertising companies in the world) with essentially real-time location data for anyone captured in a video feed. This would require an immense amount of compute power, but these companies print money, and love to upsell advertisers, so it is far from out of the question.