Apple AR Glasses Reportedly Making 2020 Debut, Apple Car Rolls Out In 2023

When it comes to predicting new products from the Apple-sphere, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is right at the top of the game. Kuo was rumored to be leaving the Apple prediction realm back in May and then simply landed at a new firm called TF Securities and kept on with his Apple predictions. The analyst's latest research note has been spied and, Kuo talks about a couple of Apple products that have been long rumored.

According to Kuo, Apple will roll out its own-branded AR glasses by 2020, and then launch the long-rumored Apple Car by 2023. The Apple car has been an on again, off again project for Apple. The Apple Car program was mothballed according to reports back in 2016 and transitioned to an effort to develop autonomous auto software that Apple could sell to automakers. Kuo is now predicting that the Apple Car is back in the works.

The analyst reckons that the Apple Car will be Apple's next star product and is likely to launch between 2023 and 2025. Apple services would be tightly integrated into the car and would allow Apple to step into the auto financing business according to his note. That admittedly seems like a strange market for Apple to step into, but it will be part of Cupertino's quest to gain its next trillion dollars in market cap after reaching the one trillion mark recently. Apple's car division is called Project Titan and has been conducting autonomous auto tests on California roads for a while now. 

As for the AR glasses, these will be much like other augmented reality glasses that have hit the market in recent years, most notably the AR glasses from Google. While there have been several products in this market none of them have managed to go mainstream. Kuo wrote in his note that "AR is the next-generation revolutionary UI." He went on to write, "We therefore think that AR does not need any killer applications given it is a killer application already."

Kuo is predicting that Apple will redefine the UIs of existing products via an AR experience. Apple had hundreds of people working on augmented reality tech with some of them working on ARKit for the iPhone allowing devs to create augmented reality apps where virtual constructs are overlaid on the real world. Past reports have suggested that Apple is working on both a chip and an operating system for AR glasses. For now, Kuo offers no hard details on either of these products, only stating that these will be the big products of the future we can expect from the company.