Smartphone sales have fallen for two consecutive years for the first time, has smartphones become an outdated technology?

Smartphones in our time have become a well-known, popular and perhaps obsolete technology, and many companies have reaped huge profits from their manufacture, but what revolutionary device is the next one that companies are seeking to find?

Apple wasn't the first to invent the smartphone, companies like Palm and Blackberry have been selling it for years, but the iPhone has offered a whole new way to interact with computers.

Permanent internet connection, easy-to-use touch screen, and clickable app icon based interface; They all look common now, but at the time it seemed like a revolution.

The smartphone was a seismic shift in the tech industry, creating entirely new business models with the replacement of everything from digital cameras to in-car GPS systems.

But smartphone sales have fallen for two years in a row for the first time, according to an analysis by Gartner. So are smart phones old technology?

The tech industry's next bet is on a series of technologies commonly called augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (MR), and typically involves a computer that is worn in front of the user's eyes.

Users will still be able to see most of the real world in front of them - unlike virtual reality (VR), which completely plunges the user into a computer-generated fantasy land - and augmented reality layers, computer-generated text and images above reality.

Industry observers and participants believe that Apple has a good opportunity to verify reality and revolutionize augmented reality as it did with smartphones.

Apple has been designing prototypes of augmented reality glasses for years, and recent reports from The Information and Bloomberg indicate; That Apple may release glasses with this technology as early as 2022, and it could cost up to $ 3,000.

But Apple is not the only company working on these products. All the big tech players such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon are also in the game.

Between reality and fiction
Screenwriters have conjured up visions of what can happen with advanced computer glasses. In one episode of the series "Black Mirror", she explored a world in which people can "block" some people from their vision through glasses, and important information emerges that comes directly when you want to. .

Today, the most common use cases are smartphone-based games and apps like Pokemon Go or Apple's Ruler app, which use the phone's screen and camera instead of relying on glasses or another set of screens on your face.

The few companies that produce augmented reality glasses mostly focus on business areas, such as manufacturing and medicine.

And augmented reality is a technology based on projecting virtual objects and information into the real user environment, to provide additional information, or act as a guide to it, in contrast to virtual reality based on projecting real objects in a virtual environment.

Here's what the biggest tech companies are doing to try to make augmented reality the next big revolution:

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Apple's success with the iPhone has made it the company it is looking to to determine the next generation of augmented reality devices, although the company has never confirmed that it is working on glasses or any other type of computer that is worn on the head.

If Apple were to launch a pair of augmented reality goggles, it could "determine the fate of the augmented reality industry", given the company's track record in publishing new technologies, says technology analyst Mike Bolland and founder of ARtillery Intelligence.

And a report from Bloomberg last month indicated that Apple's first augmented reality product could be launched early next year. The first shot is said to be a battery-powered glasses designed primarily for virtual reality, but with built-in cameras to enable augmented reality as well. The report says that this device may cost thousands of dollars and be available only in low volumes, and be more suitable for testing software developers than it being a mass market product like the one usually issued by Apple.

Ultimately, Apple can take lessons from virtual reality glasses and apply them to a pair of lightweight augmented reality goggles with transparent screens. But according to Bloomberg, the project still faces additional work on technical issues such as lens technology.

And if Apple finally revealed a big leap forward in augmented reality display technology - especially if the technology was developed and owned by Apple rather than the supplier - Apple might find itself with a device that guarantees profits for several years in the augmented reality field, as it did when the company's iPhone jumped to the top The smart phone industry.

One way to look at Apple's investment in that technology is to look at the companies that bought it in this area, where it bought a company that builds transparent optics and others that develops headphones, and companies that make software and content for augmented and virtual reality, including Akonia Holographics and Fervana. Vrvana, Metaio, Emotient, Flyby Media, Spaces, NextVR.

Google

Google was the first major technology company to launch a computer that is placed over the eyes when Google introduced Google Glass in 2013, at a cost of $ 1500 at the time, and it was explicitly targeting people in the computer industry, whom Google called "explorers."

But Google's approach has run into difficulties since then, and the company has not attempted to use advanced processing to integrate computer graphics into the real world. Instead, it was equipped with a relatively low-resolution camera and a slightly transparent screen. This screen was used to display small bits of information in the user's field of vision, such as an Apple Watch or a smartwatch on the user's face.

But Google Glass also came under fire, as it had a built-in video camera, and people felt they were being watched. One woman said she was assaulted outside a San Francisco bar in 2014 for wearing glasses.

Google stopped working on glasses temporarily in 2015, and reorganized them for companies and business developers, not for regular users. And last year it began selling for $ 999 per unit through some hardware vendors.

One of the main applications of eyeglasses is Augmedix, which uses a spectacle camera to reduce the time doctors spend on busy work. The glass camera flows the interaction with the patients to the "writers" the company hires to write important details and enter them into the patient record.

Last year, Google acquired North, a Canadian company that manufactures a pair of lightweight smart glasses worth $ 1,000.

Microsoft

Microsoft unveiled the Hololens augmented reality glasses (Hololens) in 2015, and released the first version in 2016. It is now in its second version, which costs $ 3,500. It is a specialized device targeting the business sector.

On its site, Microsoft promotes the glasses as a tool for factories, retail and healthcare. In factories, Microsoft glasses can tell workers how to repair or operate a complex machine. And Microsoft suggests that retailers can actually display their goods to customers through glasses, instead of displaying costly items or large quantities of inventory.

The Microsoft Store currently has 343 HoloLens apps, and there are no household names, many of which are simple demos featuring graphics like a birthday cake or fireworks.

Microsoft has invested heavily in this type of technology, purchasing AltspaceVR, a social network for virtual reality, in 2018.

Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking the most recently about his hopes for augmented reality. "While I expect phones to remain our primary devices for most of this decade, at some point in the 1920s, we will get unprecedented augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology," he said last year.

Facebook's enthusiasm for augmented reality is driven in part by its desire to abandon smartphone platforms from other vendors. Especially Apple. Facebook has been rejecting Apple’s control of the iPhone for years, and fighting has escalated recently as Apple plans to make technical changes to the iPhone system that will harm Facebook's main source of money, which are mobile phone ads.

If Facebook develops the next revolutionary device, it will set the rules.

Zuckerberg also predicts massive societal change stemming from augmented reality. "Imagine if you could live anywhere you choose and access any job anywhere else."

Facebook is already a pioneer in virtual reality, the cousin of augmented reality. It bought Oculus for $ 2 billion in 2014, a move that signals the start of a massive investment in these technologies. The latest head device (the Oculus 2 glasses) includes cameras, and it costs $ 300 and sold one million units last December, according to SuperData.

With front-mounted cameras and powerful processing, virtual reality glasses can bring augmented reality closer by projecting real-time images of the outside world.

The company is also working on lightweight sunglasses and hopes to launch a product this year in partnership with Luxottica, the sunglasses giant.

Amazon

Amazon, the tech giant, has the least public enthusiasm about augmented reality technology, but it sells a pair of smart glasses called Echo Frames that don't have a screen, and instead the user fully interacts with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.

Amazon is also attacking different angles of augmented reality. Last fall, it released the Amazon Augmented Reality app, but it is not a serious program. Instead of using augmented reality, it uses QR codes on Amazon shipping boxes to activate fun mini games, such as converting an Amazon box into a racing car. Or put fun sunglasses on a dog.

Other Amazon apps use augmented reality to place virtual furniture inside a user's home to ensure it's fit before making an online purchase.

Amazon also has hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers who may be among the first to adopt AR glasses, and one common use case is to help workers find merchandise in a large warehouse more easily by highlighting them with computer graphics.

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