by 
In a week of punditry around Meta’s latest batch of AR devices, the most consequential question seemed secondary: what’s the killer app or raison d’être? Beyond the specs and gadgetry of it all, what activities will these devices accomplish, and how will they improve my life?
The AR industry in general tends to de-prioritize this point, in favor of things like device specs – which is partly demand-driven, given the maligned priorities of the tech press. But what ultimately makes or breaks a device – or the broader AR category – is a question of application.
We already know the answer for Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses, which are in their third generation and validating real demand at scale. There, it’s all about line-of-sight media capture, thoughtful UX, audio quality, and multimodal AI. And it’s all propelled by a fashionable form factor.
But what about the latest category: display glasses? To be fair, Meta did address the question of its primary use case. This was made clear through Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses’ (MRDG) functions, and in the company’s direct statements. The answer is communications.
One telling moment was Meta CPO Chris Cox’ interview with Bloomberg. When asked to name the one primary intended use case for MRDG, he answered without hesitation: messaging. The speed of his answer suggests this is a deliberate and rehearsed Meta talking point.
The Anti-Metaverse
Getting more specific, what’s meant by “communications,” and how does that map to MRBDG’s feature set? You’ve likely heard the list already, but we’re talking visual messaging that’s in front of you when you need it, but unobtrusive when you don’t. And it’s intuitively controlled.
That last part brings up MRBDG’s most differentiated feature: its neural wristband. The accuracy and subtlety of thumb gestures mean the device could accomplish everything it’s supposed to while avoiding embarrassing moments for users or ‘glasshole’ public shaming.
Other potential killer apps include having a viewfinder for an already-popular RBMS use case – POV media capture. There’s also the Qualcomm AR1+ Gen-1 vision for an ambient AI assistant that goes where you go, sees what you see, and makes you smarter about your world.
Back to communications, why is that a smart starting point? It’s a mass-market play that’s relatable, straightforward, sticky, and high-frequency. Just ask Snap. It’s also inherently multi-user and synchronous, which accelerates adoption via network effect (Meta’s jam).
A focus on communications also accomplishes something that’s strategically sound for any fledgling technology: to let it piggyback on something more established. This is the anti-metaverse approach, in that the thing being sold is something everyone understands… and it exists today.
All the above invokes our friend Charlie Fink, who says that (paraphrasing) AR does best when it takes the things we already do and makes them better. This supports approaches that don’t force a learning curve or intimidation factor. They make the familiar more functional.
The ARt of the Possible
Stepping back, MRBDG is an example of the reality check consuming the XR market. After a decade of attempting ambitious and erstwhile-unrealistic versions of AR, a sort of self-awareness has set in. It’s all about leaning into the tech’s shortcomings. Call it the art of the possible.
The thought is to let AR be its best self today, rather than trying and failing to be something it can’t. We call the former ‘lite AR‘ – an approach once deemed underwhelming by the broader AR industry culture. During a time of dreaming big and loud, “lite” wasn’t in the vocabulary.
But now that there’s momentum around lite AR, the results speak for themselves – to the tune of millions of lifetime units for the ultimate lite-AR exemplar, Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses. A similar but differently-focused approach is meanwhile being validated by Xreal and VITURE.
The key term above is focus. These devices choose concrete use cases, then execute, rather than lugging the do-everything bulk that defined the previous generation of AR figureheads. These use cases also happen to be mass-market friendly, a la entertainment, fitness, and comms.
That brings us back to Meta’s latest. Meta knows that killer apps are mundane. Think of the web’s killer apps – search, shopping, messaging, etc. Mundane sounds like a bad word, but it’s not. It translates to mass-market, which XR leaders have finally chosen over sexy and unsold.
More from AR Insider…
