Xiaomi wants to "wear" glasses to achieve the bend?

This year's MWC conference, major players in the consumer electronics industry chain, once again inject new energy into the AR market.

Qualcomm, the processor platform provider, announced that it will work with seven global telecom operators to develop new XR devices, experiences, and developer programs; Geer, a company that belongs to a link in Apple's supply chain, also released the first mass-produced lightweight AR smart glasses reference design based on Snapdragon AR2, which can help brand manufacturers quickly bring relevant products to market.

Most notable are the Chinese mobile phone manufacturers: ZTE's mobile phone brand Nubia released the first AR glasses; OPPO brought the second generation of OPPO Air Glass, the world's first AR glasses using resin diffraction light waveguide lens; Xiaomi launched a wireless AR glasses Explorer Edition directly "killed" all peers.

If it was in previous years, mobile phone manufacturers to do AR glasses can be considered as a new gimmick after TWS, smart watches, but the whole industry chain and Xiaomi wireless AR glasses came out of nowhere, seems to make this old view has changed: AR glasses will be a major mobile phone manufacturers to open a new round of high-end impact of the entry point? And can reshape the high-end image of mobile phone brands?

 IDC recently released a report data shows that in 2022 China AR/VR headset shipments 1.206 million units (sales in caliber), of which AR shipments 103,000 units. Although the market has gradually opened up, but an objective fact is that there is no factory to discuss the output of consumer AR glasses that can really replace mobile phones.

 Today's flagship products have almost uniformly stripped down the functional implementation to achieve a lightweight experience, even allowing host devices such as mobile phones to provide the main computing power. Even if there are products that can be separated from other computing platforms, they are also focused on a single or a few scenarios, such as movie watching, photography, outdoor, etc.. This kind of glasses to do accessories thinking, obviously can not make consumers excited, not to feel the so-called "high-end".

At the MWC conference on February 27, Xiaomi released the Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Explorer Edition in the form of a video and PPT after the release of the 13 series, tablet and robot. According to Lei Jun, the Explorer Edition supports micro-gesture interaction, the wearer only needs to move his thumbs to achieve spaced shake. Not only that, with the help of AR, Xiaomi's wireless AR glasses can even "catch" the image being played on TV in front of your eyes, and then stand up and walk around while watching.

Xiaomi's new exploration version of AR glasses sounded gimmicky, but failed to bring a physical display, and only media XDA worldwide published an experience report on the device. According to the test, although the product can achieve spaced operation, the power of the glasses ran out after only 30 minutes. The short battery life also means that the consumer experience is far from consumer level.

In addition, the name "Discovery Edition" means that the price can not be low or will not be mass-produced, so in many industry insiders, Xiaomi before Apple released this very technological products, more like its high-end encounter, want to enhance the brand tone from a technical point of view of an attempt.For cell phone manufacturers, AR glasses with technology, science fiction and concept, is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity to raise the brand tone, and there is even the possibility of bending over Apple, but it is more hoped that the independent brands can bring a better product experience based on technological innovation, rather than marketing through the trend.