Apple casts big shadow over the XR industry | The DeanBeat

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During the Augmented World Expo this week, the crowds were back at one of the big Silicon Valley events where the cognoscenti of the metaverse, gaming and XR industries gather each year. They talked about the openness of their platforms and their hopes for shared prosperity in the future.

Thousands of people crowded the more than 3,000 booths at the event that signaled that the $38 billion XR industry (per Artillery Intelligence) is back on its feet after years of bumpy growth and naysayers who said it would never reach the mass market.

But behind the noise of the crowds, I couldn’t help feeling there was also some quiet desperation. Let’s hope this isn’t the last stand before the onslaught of the biggest walled garden. Apple is coming. Its long-awaited entry into the mixed-reality headset market may happen as early as Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) event. It’s enough to make us all forget about AI for a few days.

“It’s the iPhone moment for XR,” said Nicole Lazzaro, CEO of XEO Design and creator of the first iPhone game. She had a coveted invitation to the Apple event.

Ori Inbar, founder of AWE, said in an opening talk at AWE that the evidence had mounted for Apple’s announcement, which has been rumored for years. He noted Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, said in social media that the Apple device “is excellent.” Some veteran XR writers such as Ben Lange of Road to VR and Ian Hamilton of Upload were invited to attend the exclusive Apple event. That’s a clue for sure.

Inbar welcome Apple’s long-awaited arrival as an endorsement of a market that others had believed in for a long time.