Apple Reported to Stop Development of its AR / VR Headset

In what might be unhealthy news for the technology business, Apple has reportedly canceled plans to develop augmented reality (AR) headsets and virtual reality (VR).

According to the Taiwan-based DigiTimes portal citing people familiar with the matter, the Apple team working on the AR / VR project was briefly dissolved and "transferred to other product lines".

"Companies related to the supply chain say that Apple is adjusting R & D resources, and its development team for AR / VR headsets has been dissolved and transferred to other product lines," the report claims.

This shows that the termination of the AR project occurred when the co-creator of Microsoft Holoens Avi Bar-Zeev left as the Apple AR headset development team in January.

Some reports in the past have claimed that iPhone makers are serious about launching AR glasses as early as 2020, as well as famous Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The launch of Apple's ARkit for iOS developers has been seen as a big step for companies to enter the AR industry.

"Apple's temporary halt to the development of AR / VR headset hardware does not mean that it is not optimistic about the prospects of AR / VR," said the report, adding that the timing might not be ripe at this stage.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is always bullish on AR.

"AR and ml will be the key to sending the right data to the right person at the right time," Cook said recently when he stated the expansion of the partnership with SAP.

In the new update, Apple ARKit, the company's AR development platform that may only recognize horizontal surfaces when entering virtual objects, gets support for identifying vertical objects.

"ARKIT can now recognize and place virtual objects on a vertical surface. Using advanced PC vision techniques to find and recognize the position of a second image, ARKit will integrate real-world images into the AR experience," said the Cupertino-based giant.

ARKit 3, RealityKit and therefore Reality composers are other sophisticated tools designed by Apple to make it easier for developers to create an AR experience that is attractive to consumer an d business applications.