▼ VR Industry Development 尴尬 Will AR repeat this year? From Baidu VR In the past year, VR's twin sister AR has achieved extraordinary achievements. "Pokemon Go" has swept the world and brought the concept of augmented reality to millions of homes. The 158-million-generation social software Snapchat, which is liked by millennials, can beautify and publish images in real-time. At the same time, Microsoft's HoloLens began commercial use, Meta launched the new Meta 2, Google's AR system Tango has access to a number of mobile phone manufacturers, and Magic Leap, ODG and Vuzix are also ready to launch products this year. Compared to the current situation of VR, it seems that 2017 will be the year of AR. But, is this the truth? From the point of view of the mass consumer market, AR and VR are still at the initial stage. Although major market forecast agencies have expressed their opinions, AR market will reach 100 billion market scale by 2020, but we cannot believe it all. The VR market has also been valued very high before, but the result is that the market performance is lost. Currently, no VR vendors, including Oculus, HTC Vive, and PS VR dare to publicly disclose their own sales, but indirectly obtaining data seems to be not far behind. In October last year, HTC President Wang Xuehong said in an interview that Vive’s sales “are well over 140,000 units.†On February 3, the market research company Super Data released a report indicating that in 2016, sales of HTC Vive will be 420,000, Oculus Rift will be 240,000, and Sony PS VR will be 750,000. In October of last year, SuperData described the sales of VR products during the Thanksgiving Shopping Mardi Gras as "the biggest loser" and reduced the sales of the more popular Sony PS VR from 2.6 million to 750,000. In fact, even with high-end VR headlines, people’s enthusiasm for it is reduced. According to a survey conducted by Steam, the world's largest PC games distribution platform, only 0.38% of its users had VR head shots in October last year. This share did not increase compared to the previous month. Imagine if AR doesn't want to encounter the same circumstance as VR, then the only way is to let users accept and use it easily. However, current AR hardware faces two major problems. The first is the beauty of design. Although the effect of Microsoft's HoloLens is impressive, no one thinks this is a fashion product. On the contrary, the weird styling makes the wearer look a bit strange and far from being cool. The reason why the iPhone is so successful is thanks to its exquisite and beautiful design. Metal frames and high-quality accessories, together with Apple's comprehensive advertising, have helped them become products that consumers are scrambling to purchase. Another big problem is social acceptance. From this point of view, Google Glass, which has caused widespread concern, can serve as a guide. In 2013, Google launched the smart glasses for some people. Not only does the wearer look stupid, even the people around him feel a bit uneasy, fearing that Google Glass users will sneak at themselves. The "glasses bastards" have even become a group of people who have been scorned by society. Two years later, Google announced that it would stop selling Google Glass. Of course, just like VR, AR will only stay in the B-end market in the early days, and considering the effectiveness and value of AR in the applicable field, it is also possible to use it in large-scale business applications in 2017. Paul Travers, chief executive of Vuzix, a leader in smart glasses and AR and VR, once said in an interview at this year’s CES that Vuzix wants AR products to be smaller and lighter in size, with 80 grams or so. B-side application market.