Magic Leap moves into Business Landscape

The article starts with a little background of Magic Leap’s history to date and moves forward to explain why their new products represent Augmented Reality For a New Crowd:

“The upcoming products for the Magic Leap Enterprise Suite will specifically target the business landscape, including the healthcare vertical. We’ve already seen some evidence that the health industry could be one of the top adopters of new virtual and augmented reality tools, particularly as telehealth becomes more popular.

The enterprise suite from Magic Leap will enable modern employees to use things like spatial computing to learn new skills, manage data, and collaborate in a new environment, with 3D visualisation. Magic Leap believes that focusing on the business environment, rather than the consumer industry will help it to recover from the poor reception to the Magic Leap One Creator Edition of entertainment equipment. The CEO of Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz, expected that the entertainment headsets would sell around one million units in the first year.

It wasn’t just wishful thinking either – the Florida-based company raised $3.13 billion in venture capital to get its idea of the ground. Unfortunately, the company only managed to sell a total of 6,000 of the futuristic headsets within the first six months.

A New Chapter in Spatial Computing

Though comfortable, immersive, and unique, the Magic Leap technology just didn’t vibe with customers as well as the company had hoped. Fortunately, Chief Product Officer, Omar Khan, says that there are still opportunities for Magic Leap to get the jump on the VR/AR competition. The move into the business landscape will signal the arrival of a new chapter for Magic Leap and the spatial computing industry. Magic Leap even believes that the new strategy will lead to significant new business opportunities for its stakeholders.

While the decision to focus on the business market could lead to exciting opportunities for Magic Leap, it’s also worth noting that it puts the company in direct competition with some major brands. Leading companies like Microsoft and Google are already building their own AR applications in the business world. However, there may still be room for a competitor like Magic Leap to sweep in and take a piece of the market. Industries from banking and healthcare to investment services have begun to show that they’re more responsive to AR than consumers in search of entertainment.

Additionally, worldwide spending in the AR environment and virtual reality spaces are expected to increase to $160 billion in 2023. That’s a considerable increase compared to the estimated $16.8 billion spent in 2019, according to IDC.

More Opportunity Outside of the Entertainment Space?

Like many other companies, Magic Leap is just another example of a business that has learned the hard way how hard it is to make AR stick in the entertainment landscape. There are still a lot of hardware issues to think about when it comes to things like battery life, the field of view, and even power performance. It could be years before we see the rise of wearables for computing experiences in the consumer landscape. Apple isn’t even thinking about unveiling AR glasses until 2023, for instance.

On the other hand, there seems to be more opportunity for businesses who can bring new realities to the data management, communication, and collaboration experiences. For instance, Google Glass might have failed as a product for everyday customers, but a later version did catch on in the business market. Similarly, Microsoft has seen some success with the arrival of the HoloLens 2.

Magic Leap has recruited various companies to help build the applications and services that will be available in the upcoming Enterprise Suite. PTC was one of the brands contributing to the solution. They claim that users of Magic Leap will be able to access the AR capabilities of the Vuforia Engine via Magic Leap products.”

Magic Leap 1 Enterprise Suite includes:

• Magic Leap 1, an updated version of the Magic Leap One Creator Edition
• Two-year access to dedicated omni-channel support
• Two-year access to Device Manager with enterprise-level support from Magic Leap. Device Manager lets authorised administrators control important aspects of working with Magic Leap 1, enabling them to configure and set up devices, view usage metrics, remotely distribute apps and updates, and remotely lock or wipe devices if needed
• Two-year access to a RapidReplace program, so you can get a new device quickly if you need one
• A two-year extended warranty to guarantee Magic Leap 1 always works as it should