Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is on the second day of its F8 Developer Conference. Yesterday was the keynote by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and it painted a picture of a company that’s doubling down on augmented reality. It also laid out the groundwork for a Facebook that’s planning to take on everything from Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP) to consumer electronics giants to smartphones.
F8 and the Rise of AR
For a while there, Facebook was all about virtual reality. It hasn’t given up on the idea of social VR — after all, it spent $2 billion to buy Oculus VR in 2014 — and at F8 the company was showing off the Facebook Spaces VR app.
But it’s doubling down on augmented reality.
New developer tools in the form of the Facebook Camera Effects platform will let developers release AR apps that can run using the existing Facebook mobile app’s camera functionality. This technology will let these apps overlay virtual objects onto the real world view. It’s an approach that Pokemon Go proved could be a smash hit, helping to push it as the next big thing.
AR is something that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is pursuing with its HoloLens, and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is expected to make a key feature of its 10th anniversary iPhone 8.
However, Facebook has a different vision. At F8, the version of AR it was showing off starts with apps piggybacking on the Facebook app, so the next Pokemon Go might actually be played on Facebook instead of being downloaded from the App Store.
And FB is pursuing a future where advanced eyeglasses — very similar in appearance to Snapchat Spectacles — take the place of screens and clumsy VR headsets. The AR glasses would let the wearer view virtual objects overlaid on top of a real world view, without the need to look at a smartphone screen.
Apple’s Targets: Smartphones, Tablets, TVs
The F8 keynote showed that Facebook’s ambitions for VR go far beyond the smartphone. In fact, if the company has its way, AR glasses could eventually replace not only the smartphone, but also other screened devices like tablets and televisions.
As Zuckerberg said during the keynote: “We don’t need a physical TV. We can buy a $1 app TV and put it on the wall and watch it.”
If the 10-year roadmap Facebook laid out at F8 pans out, FB will first use AR to begin rivalling Apple and Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) app ecosystems by boosting third-party offerings that run within its own app.
Eventually, it plans to make augmented reality more than a killer app. AR glasses combined with ubiquitous high-speed internet and artificial intelligence could usurp the iPhone and Android smartphones altogether as the must-have devices at the center of our lives.
Or as Business Insider puts it, “Mark Zuckerberg just signed the death warrant for the smartphone.”
Other F8 News
Augmented reality was a huge part of the F8 keynote, but Facebook has a lot more going on in the near term. Besides the Facebook Spaces VR app, the company also showed off game and music integration in its Messenger app. Facebook is offering Spotify integration, and promises Apple Music within Messenger is coming soon.
Also coming to Messenger are more powerful bots, capable of running with predictive assistance for tasks like suggesting movie showtimes based on conversations. And Facebook is also continuing to improve M, its own AI-powered virtual assistant. Taking on Snapchat, Facebook’s Camera Effects platform also supports 2D overlays and 3D ‘masks” similar to Snapchat features.
For now, Facebook is focused on turning the camera into the most important piece of smartphone technology. But in “five to seven years,” Facebook plans to have AR glasses like the ones it envisioned at the F8 conference. And if all goes according to plan, those will not only seal FB’s position at the top of social media, it will catapult the company to the forefront of consumer electronics as well, taking on Apple and other smartphone makers and potentially disrupting just about anything that currently uses a screen for interaction.
As of this writing, Brad Moon did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
