Connect is just around the corner. It’s not the biggest event of the year, but it’s generally generating more public attention for XR than niche, larger events like MWC, AWE, and CES.
As Connect reaches a wider audience, expect to see new product announcements from companies looking to join the moment. HTC VIVE is also working on a new product.
Already, we’re looking at a busy two months ahead as the event season returns.
Meta’s annual revenue decline
Meta has released its Q2 2024 earnings report, providing essential insights into the company’s operations ahead of Connect 2024. In the earnings call, Meta said its overall revenue reached $39.07 billion, up 22% year-over-year.
The company also reported total costs and expenses of $24.22 billion, up 7% year-over-year, and capital expenditures of $8.47 billion in the second quarter. Meta’s Reality Labs division is expected to continue to see increased operating losses due to the ongoing XR product research and development cycle.
Meta’s Connect 2024 technology showcase, taking place September 25-26, 2024, will showcase the latest digital solutions in social media and XR.
NVIDIA and Meta CEOs Drop Bombshell Announcement
With Meta Connect coming up, and a year of big changes for XR, Meta needs to focus on its plans to help the company stay ahead of the curve in XR despite the competition. While the future is uncertain, Meta seems determined to deliver XR headsets, smart glasses, and an open XR operating system.
Recently, SIGGRAPH 2024 kicked off with a showcase of the latest innovations in smart glasses and similar emerging technologies such as AI, both on the show floor and in presentations. During the event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Meta gave a keynote on their future XR hardware ambitions and their technology direction with AI integration.
Zuckerberg noted that using its AI, LLM, and XR, Meta can build an open ecosystem that will help it establish its own unique selling point for XR investments. With hardware giants like Samsung eyeing the growing XR space, these interested companies bring in existing device ecosystems that could enhance the potential of Meta’s new devices.
Zuckerberg doesn’t believe XR devices will completely replace the need for other traditional devices like smartphones or laptops. “When we think about the next computing platform, we break it down into mixed reality, headsets, and smart glasses,” Zuckerberg said of the future of XR devices.
Luminous, £1 million in revenue
After a successful funding round last year, UK XR education leader Luminous has secured nearly £1m from the North East Venture Fund to develop its enterprise Metaverse platform for health and safety upskilling.
Thanks to a European Regional Development Fund award backed by Mercia Ventures, Luminous can now pursue its Metaverse ambitions and explore XR use cases in the region and beyond. The funding also allows Luminous to expand its global reach and marketing potential to new customers, bringing its valuation to approximately £3.55 million.
In particular, Luminous has experience providing solutions to the oil and gas sector, and the recent financing is expected to enable the company to expand into new sectors. Chris McCourt of Mercia Ventures Luminous’ system, it said, “enables companies to replicate real-world scenarios and deliver more effective training at a lower cost.”
Get your first look at Microsoft Co-pilot AR smart glasses.
According to a report from Windows Latest, Microsoft recently filed a patent request that provides a potential first look at augmented reality smart glasses. The USPTO filings, “Complex Poisson Estimation for Wearable Computing Devices” and “Enhanced Resolution in Spatial Frequency Space,” indicate that Microsoft could be developing AR smart glasses with Co-Pilot genAI integration.
It is important to note that patents do not always confirm a company’s plans for future products or hardware. However, patents can provide insight into a company’s interests in a particular technology market, similar to how Apple filed numerous Vision Pro patents years before the products were officially announced.
A recent Microsoft patent indicates that the company has been working on this potential product since at least 2023, according to the patent filing. The filing shows that Microsoft is experimenting with its own Windows OS for spatial computing, possibly Windows Holographic, which would be able to sense the user’s environment and interactions, similar to Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computing framework.
The patent also shows Microsoft using AI to process spatial information captured by the device’s camera, and suggests it will integrate CoPilot for a Meta Ray-Ban-style virtual assistant service.
Details are limited, but the filing highlights Microsoft’s efforts to make the device accessible, including support for low-light conditions. Aside from some technical details, the filing doesn’t reveal much about the potential success of Hololens.