Augmented RealityConsumer ElectronicsAISoftware
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A compact home console, the Nex Playground, resurrects Kinect‑style motion play with four‑player tracking and a $249 price point, but most titles require an ongoing subscription. The same briefing highlights strategic shifts at major tech firms — Tesla reallocating vehicle production capacity toward robots and Snap carving out its AR eyewear into a separate unit — that underscore changing investment priorities across consumer tech.
Indian startup Sarvam unveiled compact on-device AI built as two voice-optimized models that run in megabyte-sized footprints and support many Indian languages; it showed a consumer wearable due in May 2026 and named partnerships with Qualcomm, HMD (Nokia phones) and Bosch to target phones, autos and new glasses hardware.
Apple is accelerating work on three new wearables — augmented glasses, a sensor-rich pendant, and AirPods updated with a camera and broader AI — to make Siri multimodal and context-aware. Reports also say Apple quietly acquired an Israeli startup that converts facial motion into structured signals, underscoring a broader industry push (led by Meta among others) to couple sensors and on-device models for low-latency, privacy-preserving experiences.
Meta is reportedly preparing a facial-recognition feature, internally called Name Tag, for its smart glasses and plans to integrate identification capabilities with its AI assistant potentially this year. The push comes as Meta ramps up its AI-eyewear commercial strategy amid rising unit sales and an internal pivot inside Reality Labs, increasing pressure to deliver distinctive features despite privacy and technical risks.
OpenAI has assembled a dedicated team to build a family of consumer AI devices, starting with a camera-equipped speaker priced around $200–$300 and not expected to ship before February 2027. The push comes as other big tech players accelerate on-device sensing and multimodal assistants, raising engineering, supply-chain and privacy trade-offs OpenAI will have to manage.
On Meta’s quarterly call Mark Zuckerberg pitched AI-enabled eyewear as a core consumer product and pointed to roughly threefold year-over-year unit growth for Meta’s glasses, while the company quietly reallocates resources away from big VR ambitions—cutting Reality Labs roles and shrinking headset plans—to prioritize lighter AR wearables and in-house AI work.
Samsung told investors it plans to bring an augmented-reality eyewear product to market in 2026, positioning the device around multimodal artificial intelligence. The project leverages partnerships with established eyewear brands and an XR-focused software stack to deliver camera and sensor-driven experiences without necessarily using a traditional head-mounted display.
Meta has scaled back its high-cost virtual reality program, cutting roughly 1,500 Reality Labs roles and shuttering multiple VR game studios while redirecting resources toward AI and AR products. The move reflects weak consumer demand for immersive VR, mounting losses in the division, and stronger returns from smart glasses and AI initiatives.