Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Predicts Apple’s Mixed Reality Products

Ming-Chi Kuo is an Apple watcher with a long track record of successfully calling product announcements and front-running Cupertino. The analyst’s new note focuses on Apple’s fabled mixed reality devices (h/t MacRumors).

Kuo’s prediction: Augmented reality rollout in three phases

1. Apple plans to release a “helmet”-type VR headset in mid-2022, with Sony Micro-OLED displays and cameras that enable passthrough AR (seeing the real world through the device).
2. The iPhone maker is targeting 2025 for AR smart glasses.
3. And then going even smaller? According to Kuo, Apple wants to develop AR contact lenses “by 2030–2040.”

Phase 3 uses a highly loosey-goosey timeframe, but we’ll cut Apple some slack. AR contacts are well beyond the scope of what today’s hardware can handle.

• While we’re here: Mojo Vision, a well-hyped and well-capitalized startup, is also developing AR contact lenses and in the R&D phase.

Upshot: We sound like a broken record, but alas, we are once again asking you to let us say it: Big Tech sure seems to think a new computing shift is afoot. They seem confident it will happen this decade, which could make for an Augmented Roaring Twenties™.