Cook said that Apple is making corresponding investments in AR, and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said that from the perspective of linking Metauniverse with their current virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects, Cook said that Apple is making corresponding investments in AR.

Cook said that Apple is investing in AR 1. According to the performance report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 released by Apple, Apple's revenue in the first fiscal quarter reached123.95 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 1 1%, which was the highest single-season revenue in history. Earnings per share was $2.65438 +0, a year-on-year increase of 25%; The net profit was $34.63 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20%. It is worth mentioning that this quarter, Greater China has once again become the backbone of Apple's performance improvement, with a growth rate of 265,438+0% becoming the fastest growing region in all regions, with sales revenue reaching 25.783 billion US dollars.

In addition to outstanding performance, Cook also said in the earnings conference call that Apple handled the global supply chain problem and chip shortage well in the last quarter, and this problem will be further improved in the next quarter. It is expected that the company's performance will continue to grow steadily.

In addition, Cook confirmed that the company intends to develop technologies related to hyperuniverse and has made some investments in AR.

In response to a question from Metauniverse, Cook said, "We are an innovative company, so we have been exploring emerging technologies. We have discussed in detail the field of hyperuniverse, which is of great interest to us. There are now more than 14000 ARKit applications in our Apple App Store, which now provides an incredible augmented reality experience for millions of users. Therefore, we have seen great potential in the field of super-universe and made corresponding investments. "

Cook said that Apple is investing in AR. According to reports, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said that the company saw great potential from the hyperuniverse, and he also linked this with their current virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects, and said that he was making corresponding investments.

Leaked information and rumors indicate that Apple will play an important role in the metauniverse. Tim Cook, CEO of the company, also confirmed in the earnings conference call that they are interested in developing related technologies and have made some investments in augmented reality.

Specifically, when answering the question of Metauniverse, Cook said, "We are a company engaged in innovative business" and "There are more than 654.38+04 million AR applications in the App Store." This is a CEO's regular answer to such questions.

But Cook added that Apple has seen "great potential" in this field and is making "corresponding investments".

Metauniverse refers to a future concept, in which people can work, participate in activities and socialize with the help of virtual reality. Meta has begun to make early attempts in this field.

It is not surprising that Cook mentioned the application of augmented reality. Since adding lidar module to iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro, the company has been promoting mainstream augmented reality experience.

There are rumors that Apple plans to release a virtual reality headset in 2022. This device allows people to interact with the hyperuniverse, but there are also rumors that the word is "banned" within Apple.

Cook said that Apple is investing in AR. Apple revealed its metacosmic ambition at the earnings meeting on Thursday. Apple CEO Cook said that the company will expand the layout of augmented reality (AR) applications. This statement triggered a warm response from the market, and Apple's share price rose by more than 5% in a few hours.

Apple Mall has14,000 AR applications. Cook said that with the further expansion of investment in AR, this number will continue to rise.

"We have seen the great potential in the hyperuniverse field and increased our investment in this field." Cook said in response to investors' questions about the hypercosmic plan.

The work of R&D focuses on cross-cutting fields.

Apple analyst Guo Ming once predicted that Apple plans to launch an ar device this year or next year, and then launch AR glasses. Cook said at the earnings conference that Apple's work in R&D focuses on the intersection of hardware, software and services.

"These cross-cutting areas are the places where miracles are most likely to occur." Cook said, "At present, we have invested quite a lot in things that don't exist in the market."

Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Wyman Consulting, told the First Financial Reporter: "Smartphones are also the primary equipment of the Metauniverse, and Apple has advantages in sensing hardware, operating system and image engine."

Although Apple has not released AR-related hardware products so far, the patent of Apple headphones can be traced back to 2006 at the earliest. In recent years, Apple's patent layout in the AR field is more intensive, including 3D sensing technology that can recognize gestures and eye commands, detailed process of rendering AR, eye tracking and prediction scheme, mixed eye tracking scheme, vision correction, and patents for interacting with virtual interface. The number of patents exceeds 2000.

In the past decade, Apple has acquired or invested in more than 20 companies related to AR technology, including bionic chips, miniature LED screens, sensors, locatable space sound field technology and other fields.

Earlier, it was reported that Apple was cooperating with TSMC to lay out a mini-OLED production line. Industry speculation, micro organic light-emitting diode displays may be used in the first batch of Apple AR glasses.

Cook once said: "AR is a technology as promising as iPhone. At some point in the future, AR will become as common as three meals a day and become a part of people's lives, just like mobile phones. "

Zhang Junyi said that Apple also has advantages in service and content ecology. AR devices can bring more opportunities to increase subscriptions. Through the immersive AR experience, existing fitness or entertainment video content products can become more attractive.

In the just-concluded holiday quarter, Apple's service revenue increased by 24%, reaching $654.38+$09.5 billion, exceeding analysts' expectations of $654.38+$08.6 billion. In the past quarter, the number of users of Apple's paid services such as streaming music and games increased to 785 million, up from 620 million in the same period last year and 745 million in the previous quarter.

Neil Shah, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, told China Business News: "Hypercosmic-related services, such as AR applications, may change Apple's revenue structure."

With the growth of services and subscribers, Apple's gross profit margin has increased to over 40%. Shah predicted that Apple's service business still has a lot of room for improvement, and may surpass the hardware sales of iPhone in the next five years.

It will take another 5- 10 years for the industry to develop.

Xiong Zhen, CEO of Arrow Iz, a game developer and veteran of the game industry, told the First Financial Reporter: "On the one hand, Apple can create more new potential devices (VR/AR) to attract more users to join the ecology; On the other hand, it can create new usage scenarios and consumption scenarios of the meta-universe, and increase users' consumption investment in content, software and applications. "

Xiong Zhen said that the above two aspects will promote the business and growth of more existing developers, stimulate the application and innovation opportunities of a more diverse universe, and bring more entrepreneurship and investment to join the entire ecological evolution. "But these still need a huge amount of new startups and venture capital, and the development of the industry still needs more than 5- 10 years."

Zhou Qun, managing director of Ipsos Consumer Technology Research Institute, told CBN: "The foundation of Metauniverse is 5G+ artificial intelligence technology. Now that the technical level is complete, it mainly depends on how the application side advances, and capital can accelerate the application of these mature technologies. "

"In the past year, social media companies such as Meta have successively launched smart glasses, and it is expected that the smart wearable technology that Apple has laid out for many years will eventually appear in what form." Zhou Qun said, "After all, so far, apart from Apple watches and headphones, Apple has not released any new smart wearable hardware products."

The technology giants are launching an "arms race" about the meta-universe. Recently, Microsoft announced a cash acquisition of American game company Activision Blizzard with a total value of $68.7 billion, setting a record for the highest transaction in the technology industry.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Loup Venture, said, "Apple has no choice. AR will replace the iPhone in the future, and Apple must ensure that people will not fall behind when they change the way they use hardware. "

According to the data of global market insight, by 2024, the market scale of AR products will reach $654.38+065 billion, and it will grow at a high speed of 80%.

Apple laid out AR glasses later than Google and met a better opportunity. Google launched Google Glass as early as 20 14, but the software and application scenarios were not ready at that time.

"Apple's cleverness lies in letting others try first and dominate the market by themselves, because almost all the technologies adopted by Apple can become the mainstream in the future." A person in charge of research and development of a hardware company told the First Financial Reporter.