International Mobile Phone Manufacturers Layout Metaverse - Apple

Apple Inc. was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California by Steve Jobs, Steve Gary Wozniak and Ronald Gerald Founded by Ron Wayne et al. Apple’s operating income in fiscal 2021 is as high as $365.8 billion, and its net profit is as high as $94.7 billion. Although Apple has not stated its position on the development of the Metaverse, when the AR and VR devices that Apple is developing will be launched, it is considered to be the biggest driving force for the rapid development of the Metaverse industry. The only status in the world that gives up on me.

1. Hardware and OS

In terms of AR devices, Apple’s AR devices are already gaining momentum. There are two AR/MR headsets in Apple’s plan: one is a high-end commercial AR/MR general-purpose headset, only for B-end users, and the other is a thin and light AR glasses with daily functions, mainly for C end user. Apple’s first MR/AR device has completed the P2 prototype test, or will be put into mass production in the second quarter of 2022, and will be officially launched in the second half of 2022. In terms of OS, Apple has built its own closed-loop ecosystem, and the ARKit operating system has basically maintained an iterative rhythm of “one major version a year”. From its release in 2017 to 2021, ARKit has been updated to version 5.0. The operating system is designed to help developers build a better AR development experience, and at the same time lay out the upstream of the AR content industry chain and lock AR developers in advance. In terms of development tools, Apple has launched different underlying frameworks and development tools RealityKit, Reality Composer, and Reality Converter for developers, artists, and ordinary users. At the same time, these development tools are based on Apple’s own operating system ARKit.

2. Content ecology

As for the App Store, the App Store has been launching AR-enabled apps since 2009. After the first release of ARKit in 2017, the number of AR-related apps and games in the App Store doubled, from 2,484 in 2016 to In 2017, there were 4506 models, which further increased to 4913 models in 2018. Comparing AR applications and game products, the usage scenarios of applications are more abundant than games, and the growth trend of applications is far more than that of games. In 2018, both AR applications and games in the App Store reached their peak, with 4,154 and 759 products launched respectively. In terms of entertainment and office, Apple has successively acquired two virtual reality content companies - VR live broadcast company NextVR and virtual conference company Spaces, to lay out entertainment and office scenes respectively. On the Apple TV side, Apple plans to add an additional AR feature to the Apple TV+ streaming video service (originally planned for release in 2021, but delayed due to the pandemic), which can capture certain aspects of a scene in a TV show, such as characters or objects, Display it on the viewer’s iPhone or iPad and overlay it on the user’s surrounding reality.

3. Yuanchuang’s point of view

According to the analysis of the research institute, Apple has been working on the underlying technology of AR software and hardware for many years, and its layout is almost unmatched in the industry in terms of breadth, depth and scale. At the same time, Apple has always pursued the ultimate and built its own ecology, so Apple is most likely to complete the innovation of human-computer interaction and promote the popularization of new hardware (AR/VR). Unlike Meta founder Zuckerberg’s clear-cut entry into the metaverse, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an exclusive interview with Time Magazine in September 2021 that he would prefer to call it the concept of the so-called “metaverse”. It’s Augmented Reality (AR). Unlike Meta, which focuses on building a hardware and software ecosystem with the Oculus VR headset as the entrance, Tim Cook has repeatedly expressed strong confidence in AR in public. Apple has been quietly working on the underlying AR technology for many years and gradually improving the ecological layout. Regarding AR, Cook believes that “AR is the superposition of the virtual and the real world. Unlike VR, which replaces the real world, AR will not distract people’s attention from the real world. Instead, it will enhance the connection between people and reality, and enhance the relationship between people. collaboration between”. Apple doesn’t seem to want users to devote all their time to the Internet and smart terminals. They want their products to be just a tool for users, a part of their daily life rather than everything. The institute believes that although Apple is not the leader of this round of metaverse craze, Apple is benefiting from it. At the same time, in the era of mobile Internet, privacy leakage has become a major incentive to threaten network security; in the era of the Metaverse, user data has grown exponentially, and the consequences of privacy leakage will also increase exponentially, and data security will become a consideration for users of the Metaverse. Key factor. Apple has always placed great emphasis on user privacy protection. Apple’s privacy protection capabilities will become another powerful tool for winning the metaverse competition after hardware technology and closed ecology.