A well-known and reliable analyst is convinced: there is a new Apple product on the way, destined to oust the iPhone within a decade at most
Apple iPhone on January 9, 2022 will turn 15 years old, definitely not a few for a product that, since the beginning, has been a revolution. But it will reach the age of 25 before disappearing from the market, outclassed by the next revolution. This is the opinion of Ming-Chi Kuo, one of the most accredited and reliable analysts of the electronics market, an almost mythological figure that very often has made accurate predictions about Apple products.
More than a prediction, however, this time we should talk about a prophecy: according to Kuo, in fact, in 10 years iPhones will be replaced by augmented reality viewers and Apple would be almost ready to launch its first device of this type. The analyst predicts that this will happen at the end of 2022, that is exactly one year from now. It will be, says Kuo in one of his latest reports, a viewer as powerful as a Mac and that will need neither an iPhone nor a computer to work. It will therefore be completely autonomous, powerful and will be used through apps developed specifically for this new device. Will it be true?
Apple AR Visor: how it will be
"It has the processing power of a Mac, it can work independently from a Mac or an iPhone and it supports a wide range of applications, not only specific apps", so Kuo describes Apple's augmented reality viewer, coming at the end of 2022 and destined, in ten years, to retire the Apple phone.
According to Kuo, Apple's AR viewer will have two chips: one of the highest level, with power similar to that of the M1 chip in the new Macs, and the other of lower power that will be used only to manage data from sensors.
Apple's AR viewer will have inside two small 4K displays produced by Sony with OLED technology, which can also be used for virtual reality applications. For example those of the metaverse, which is expected to become the norm within a few years. To offer the user the transparency mode, necessary to show an augmented reality with a non-transparent visor, at least 6-8 optical modules will be needed, compared to the 3 modules used on iPhones.
Will it replace the iPhone?
According to Kuo, if Apple's new virtual and augmented reality visor requires connection to a computer or an iPhone, this would lead to the rapid death of the project. A viewer that is autonomous from any other hardware, on the other hand, will rely on its own new ecosystem of apps disconnected from iOS apps.
This, according to the analyst, is the only way to create a complete and flexible user experience. That is, to put it simply, to create another revolutionary product, the successor to the iPhone that will work because of the successor to the App Store. Apple's AR viewer, then, will replace the smartphone in the long run because it will offer so much more than any smartphone can offer the user. Even if the smartphone is an Apple iPhone.