The latest report from industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo breaks from the recent trend of predicting the 2018 iPhone lineup. Instead, Kuo is talking about the future of Apple – and the release of some long-rumored new products.
Specifically, the report suggests that Apple will build on the Augmented Reality framework it introduced last year with a new wearable: AR glasses. This kind of product has cropped up in rumors for years, ever since Google’s ill-fated Glass experiment – but it could be that Apple is just now coming into the kind of technology and resources to make AR glasses a reality.
Kuo expects we will see a set of AR-enabled smart glasses from Apple as soon as 2020. With ARKit maturing at a pretty fast rate, that’s not too crazy an expectation.
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Meanwhile, the report also looks into the prospect of an Apple Car. That’s something we’ve been mulling over for years, and though the rumors have died down a little recently, it’s still a given that Apple is working on something. It’s gone public with its plans to work on software for driverless cars, but with the number of automotive talents its hired in the last few years, you’d have to think Apple is at least considering manufacturing its own car.
If this latest report is accurate, we shouldn’t expect to see Apple reveal anything for at least five years. But as a long-term project, Kuo expects an Apple Car to hit the market sometime between 2023-2025.
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Kuo has an impressive track record with iPhone and iPad launches, so we take his reports seriously. That said, predicting several years into the future is a much more difficult skill and we’re not convinced these products are a dead cert to ever see the light of day. We do, however, believe that Apple is working hard on developing these ideas – and if it thinks they’re good enough, the timeframes Kuo suggests seem plausible.