Smart EyeGlasses may replace iPhones in 2023 and accelerate e-Shopping more than COVID-19 ...
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Smart EyeGlasses may replace iPhones in 2023 and accelerate e-Shopping more than COVID-19 ...

Smart Glasses' impact on retail (and other industries) could be greater than that of COVID-19. By 2023, all digital giants -- FB, Apple, Amazon, Google -- will have merged AR, AI, Bone Conduction, Voice, and 5G into eyewear. Retailers need to think hard about this.

Below you will read when, why, and how this eyewear revolution will happen.

Facebook

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Facebook's smartglasses will likely pair Augmented Reality -- including object recognition and maybe even facial recognition -- with ear and voice sensory features.

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TheIndependent wrote this on Sept 4, 2020 (here):

Facebook has shown a pair of augmented reality glasses that give the wearer “perceptual superpowers” – meaning that it will amplify what the user wants to hear, and lower the volume of background noise.

Apple

Apple will launch AR EyeWear in 2023, just like Facebook, according to The Information.

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Apple is hunting for the next big platform after phones. So is Facebook. So is Amazon. So is Google. Eyewear may be that platform.

Earlier, Apple's CEO Tim Cook told The Independent that he does not believe “anything will be untouched” by augmented reality and that shopping will be changed “entirely”. Watch this is a concept video and imagine how grocery shopping could transform.

An invention like this could give shopper unprecedented access to product data - competitive pricing, product reviews, ingredient descriptions, and availability - in a quiet, friction-free way. A swipe of the frames, a voice command, or as you'll see later, a thought could trigger the buy button and home delivery from a competitor.

Google + North (Thalmic Labs)

Google must agree with Tim Cook. After launching Google Glass in 2013, Google is back in the race. On June 30, 2020, Google spent $180 million to acquire Focals by North (also known as Thalmic Labs). Thalmic has filed for 244 patents.

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North described itself as one step better than a phone. It said it's a "developer of smart glasses designed to provide information in front of the eyes instead of crouching over a smartphone." North's website as of Sep 5, 2020 -- it's now Google:

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Interestingly, Amazon's Alexa Fund invested in North in 2016 and again in 2019. North embedded Alexa into its Frames -- becoming a proof-of-concept for Amazon.

Amazon subsequently abandoned North to build its Echo Frames which look like North. Echo Frames cost about $179 -- much lower than the $1,000 noted above in CNBC's article.

North raised $218 million including about $40 million in debt. North's investors broke even or maybe lost a bit of money due to the $180 million price tag. What Google got, though, is a big patent portfolio and a new Smart Glasses platform.

Amazon

Echo Frames all you to put Alexa on your face -- as part of Amazon's quest to put Alexa everywhere. In the Fall of 2019, Echo Frames became a Day 1 product ... order by invitation only.

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The first 2.5 minutes of is video -- These Smart Glasses Let You Take Alexa Anywhere -- is worth watching.

In its current v1 state, you can use Echo Frames to talk on the phone (without knowing where your phone is), set reminders, listen to podcasts, call an Uber or Lyft, play games, listen to the radio, and get weather updates, and watch YouTube videos.

In another video review, Devon Connelly says, "I've had these (Echo Frames) for 60 days now and they're great. … Having Alexa on the go is fantastic and super convenient. ... Highly recommended."

Remember, though, this is Amazon's v1. Smartglasses will get a lot better. Month-by-month, Amazon's 10,000-person Alexa AI Team is busy enhancing Echo Frames and other Alexa-enabled products.

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Beyond transforming the shopper experience, these engineers are trying to impact a variety of industries. For instance, synthetic and dynamic versions of Einstein or Rosa Parks (historical experts) could project into eyewear — enhancing education. Healthcare could improve as glasses help the hearing impaired … even improving a students’ train-of-thought in the classroom.

Other companies — beyond Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple — are also in the eyewear race. They include dozens of startups, Bose, and Chinese manufacturers. 

This Matters Because Most Adults Wear Eyeglasses

According to the Vision Council of America, roughly 75% of adults (or 182 million Americans) use some sort of vision correction. 64% of them wear eyeglasses, and 11% wear contact lenses. 207 million Americans wear non-prescription sunglasses and another 40 million wear readers. 

Eyewear is a "$35 billion business sector in the U.S.," according to the Vision Council. 

The Personal Digital Economy

Smart Eyeglasses will help shape the Personal Data Economy. As data becomes an integral part of our lives, eyewear will fuel the data streams —

By 2025 ~ The average person will interact with connected devices 4,800x per day – every 18 seconds ~ IDC

IP and Smart Glasses

Patents have increasingly been filed for Smart Eyeglasses. This graphic from Iterate.ai's trend tracker shows ~2,900 patents pending and granted ...

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And those patents have been filed globally.

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Below are 4 of the 2,900 smart eyeglasses patents picked up on Iterate.ai's trend monitoring platform:

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Not all the patents are about the eyes. Look at this IP recently granted to Apple which Popular Mechanics wrote about on August 4, 2020:

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Sounds far fetched, but here is a 2017article describing why Amazon may be working on Bone Conduction:

The futuristic thinking detailed in these patents is coming to life. It's all possible (and probable) because a number of megatrends are maturing and converging.

The Great Convergence: Coming in 2023

In 2023, many of the technologies shown below will mature. Each will interact with the others in new ways -- thanks partly to 5G. By 2023, more than 1 billion consumers will be using 5G phones and companies will be spending $100 billion on AR/VR.

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Blockchain advancements are likely to play a role in privacy and the Personal Data Economy, too. By 2023, all of these technologies are hitting significant adoption rates.

The $120 billion startup community is betting on convergence. Digital First companies like Amazon are also betting on convergence—and they’re investing enormous amounts of money in R&D to create the convergence.

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Never before, in the world's history, have we seen the importance of Open Innovation and the clashing of concepts. Seemingly unrelated concepts and industries merging together thanks to digital.

Here's are a set of technologies that are driving the Smart Glasses revolution:

AI and AI Chips

AI chips are adding brains and memory to consumer products. They are so small they can be tucked into virtually any consumer product.

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AI Training

Products like Smartglasses can learn a lot faster these days. In under three years, 14,640 minutes to train an AI has been reduced to 3 minutes. That’s roughly a 5,000-fold speed improvement as shown in this Fortune article: Inside big tech’s quest for human-level A.I.:

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5G Wireless

5G consumer usage is expected to pass 4G in 2023. This enables the Digital-First economy because 5G will move data at speeds required to process AR and AI in real-time.

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Here is why 5G is a lynchpin. 5G can connect 1,000,000 devices per access area and process data 10x to 100x faster than 4G …

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In practical terms, here's how data speeds will improve -- in your smart glasses:

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Imagine shopping in an Albertsons or Target grocery store, and seeing all of Amazon's Whole Foods offerings in your glasses -- with product reviews, ingredients, and prices -- then swiping your frame or saying "buy" to order home delivery.

Sensors

Amazon and the other GAFA companies leverage the startup community to advance creatively and faster. For instance, Amazon invested in Wiliot which is exploring technologies that decrease battery dependencies while improving the IoT experience. See Wiliot in action here:

Wiliot's website states:

"Anything we wear, touch or use can include sensing and connectivity, thanks to battery-free devices with an infinite lifetime."

Wiliot type technologies will send information to shoppers' glasses (not just their phones).

Costs and sizes of sensors like Wiliot are decreasing …

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This graphic from Wiliot tells a similar story:

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Wiliot, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, says ...

We envision a world of smarter "Things" that can sell themselves and offer functionality not possible before.

Apparel and pharmaceutical packaging become connected to the cloud.

The Internet of Things can scale and offer real value as we understand where products are, who is using them and when they need to be replenished.

Manufacturing, supply chain and inventory can be optimized.

Makers of products and retailers can flourish in the face of disruption from online shopping.

Anything we wear, touch or use can include sensing and connectivity, thanks to battery-free devices with an infinite lifetime.

Data Storage

For years now, data storage costs have fallen even more dramatically than sensor costs. This allows us to harness the gargantuan amounts of data produced by EyeGlasses, Phones, and Tesla type cars.

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Not only that, but data will be stored and processed on the Edge.

(Wireless) Edge Computing and Processing

The tiny AI-chips and 5G will entitle Edge Computing. Computations will happen inside products -- not on AWS or Google's cloud. This Qualcomm graphic (along with Iterate's notes on Privacy, Blockchain, and the Personal Data Economy) help explain:

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"Machine learning may become a staple in edge devices in the next five years, with some forecasts estimating that 98% of all edge devices will have some kind of intelligence features by 2025," according to this article in All About Circuits.

Many computations and AI-based decisions can happen inside your eyeglasses, sunglasses, maybe even your readers. And your glasses may then talk to you, too.

Audio (Hearing) and Voice

Imagine being able to use your glasses to drown out every noise except that upon which your eyes are focused. You hear what's in your line of sight.

TheIndependent wrote this about Facebook's Glasses on Sept 4, 2020 (here):

Facebook has shown a pair of augmented reality glasses that give the wearer “perceptual superpowers” – meaning that it will amplify what the user wants to hear, and lower the volume of background noise.

The wearable comes from Facebook’s Reality Labs Research, which aims to “create virtual sounds that are perceptually indistinguishable from reality and to redefine human hearing”, according to the company’s blog post.

The augmented reality glasses feature headphones and microphones that capture audio around the wearer, and then tracks their head movements.

As the wearer focuses on an object or direction, the glasses enhances the sound from that area and lowers the volume of everything else.

Augmented Reality

The list of AR startups is long -- and many of them can provide content for Glasses, much like Websites supply content for your PC. They're building content for News, Music, Shopping, Sports, Utilities, Transportation, kids, food and drink, enterprise, art ...

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Bone Conduction and Neural Platforms

If bone conduction and neural interfaces become lodged in these products -- what you see could intersect with what you hear. And that intersection could be cataloged. This video from MIT's media lab provides insights into where this technology cold take us:

CBS interviewed this same scientist, Arnav Kapur, who works on Fluid Interfaces:

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Due to patent activity shown earlier, we suspect that Apple is working on bone conduction and related concepts. We have reason to believe that Amazon's 10,000 Alexa developers are working on interesting voice-replacement interfaces, too.

Blockchain and your Digital Me

All of this data flowing from EyeGlasses, smartwatches, phones, and cars will be retained -- maybe over your lifetime. That data will become your Digital Me.

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Your Digital Me's memory will be magnitudes better than your Physical Me's memory. It'll remember most-everything you do, every day. Your Digital Me will have far better math skills, too.

Consumer journeys will be stored in high-def. This is a marketer's dream. ...... Well, maybe. ...... Depending on who controls the data.

Startups are working hard to let consumers control and provision of their own personal data. Blockchain is likely to be at the heart of this. Open Source tools are springing up, too. China's government has made Blockchain a national priority -- in partnership with companies like Baidu and Alibaba.

This is a whole-nuther topic -- how each of us can own our digital footprints -- our Digital Me's. But, it does intersect with the Smart Eyeglasses topic due to the amount of highly personal data our eyewear will produce.

Summary

Advice for companies and leaders:

Tech Teams. Going forward, companies will only be as good as their Tech Teams. I'm not talking about old-fashioned "IT and maintenance" thinking; I'm talking about Development Teams. Today, as COVID-19 is showing us, technology needs to play a highly strategic role in every big organization. Digital-related pressures are only going to increase.

Open Innovation. Companies also need to become increasingly proficient at accessing outside technical resources, especially startups. No individual company -- not even Amazon and Google -- can do it alone today. Scouting and partnering will matter. This means Open Innovation will be a strategic imperative for almost every company.

Ecosystems -- Companies of the Future:

Ecosystems -- or digitally networked platforms -- will be the dominant company format in the future. Actually, ecosystems already are if you measure companies by market cap:

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The most powerful businesses will span across traditional industry boundaries as seen in the Amazon graphic below. They'll be data networks -- in addition to data collection engines. They'll merge diverse data streams -- often helping them make AI-based recommendations (and even AI-based decisions) in real-time. These networked platforms will be all-powerful -- accessing vast amounts of info far, beyond anything witnessed historically. In this situation, history will not be a precursor to the future.

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Eyeglasses:

Smart EyeGlasses and other consumer products will fuel the data economy. The big ecosystems -- Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook -- are pushing the envelope. After 2023, everything you see, hear and say may join the global data flow. Everything may get cataloged. All that data will interact with AI.

Keep your eye on EyeWear developments because shopping, entertainment, education, and other daily activities could change in unforeseen ways.





Jon, yet another massively thought provoking look at the near future. I believe thought controlled actions will quickly follow the various voice (spoken aloud or internally) initiatives. Thanks again for keeping us all on our feet!

Dave Jenkins

VP of Product and Research at Iterate.ai

4 年

2/2 I also spoke with Bose about their smart headphones whcih could beep or give audio clues when I was pointing my head in the right direction (think 'boola boola' for directions). Together with smart glasses, this might work for some use cases: - finding my car in a garage (or my rental car in the lot) - showing big green arrows from the ceiling in the supermarket for stuff on my list - showing parts schema for air force techs while they look at a jet engine - showing hot red arrows over my tinder matches when I'm at the disco These uses are passive requiring no action from me, just viewing. These uses will work

Dave Jenkins

VP of Product and Research at Iterate.ai

4 年

1/2 For a couple of years there, we were demonstrating our large multiscreen immersive Liquid Galaxy system at tech shows for Google. As part of these same booths, Google would have their peeps wearing Google Glass, so I had the opportunity to see these in action for several hours, worn by professional users. What I saw: - cool, but ordinary people can get disoriented quickly (even in AR not VR) - the interface suxord, bad. Google people would have a hard time trying to slide their finger along the temple to select the right menu being shown on the glass. Ergonomically, it was awkward. If the big tech are trying to conquer this elephant again, my advice: - information should mostly be supplemental, not the main thing (I should be able to just look at some object, that object gets recognized, and the glasses show supplemental information automatically with no interaction required by me. - at most, I'm willing to doubletap the temple on the frame for confirmation or to 'approve' something, but that's the extent of interaction you're going to get from me or anyone else. - Apples concept of having all those apps like a smartphone and some sort of virtual keyboard is absolute hogwash-- nobody is going to do that, sorry.

Vikki Nowak

VP, Prospect Experience @ University of Phoenix | Helping Working Adults Chose the Best Path to Reach Their Goals

4 年

Thank you for summarizing and reminding us all of this next tech wave. I personally can't wait for the day when I simply look into my refrigerator, a recipe that utilizing the items in my refrigerator and presents itself to me...and of course then, the missing ingredients show up an hour later from Whole Foods!

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