AR/VR will not be able to replace mobile phones and TVs as Facebook wishes.

Original title: AR/VR will not be able to replace mobile phones and TVs as Facebook wishes.

Facebook's F8 developer conference last week was still stirring, especially as CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his views on the absence of a smartphone or television.

While Zuckerberg is right to believe that AR and VR will play an important role in the ecosystem of the future, Facebook as a social platform may lose its replacement value. Even worse, as the world's largest social network, Facebook is losing its intrinsic social needs and not pushing most high-tech products to use.

There's no point in sales behind VR.

Zuckerberg demonstrated his vision for the late iphone and post-television era and formally launched the augmented reality platform at the F8 conference. At the same time, he said in an interview with America today: "We don't need a physical TV." We can buy a $1 app for ' TV ' and put it on the wall to watch. ”

"We all want a pair of smart glasses, or eventually a contact lens that looks and feels normal, so we can overlap all the information and digital objects in the real world," he explained in a keynote speech. Luckily, I took part in the conference, but when everyone around me nodded enthusiastically, I felt uncomfortable in my chair and had no impulse to be excited.

There is little evidence that many people want to add realistic spectacles (not to mention socializing), and there is plenty of evidence that people don't need ar glasses.

Consider the following facts:

The 3D film market, which needs glasses, is shrinking and people's admission rates are getting lower;

3D televisions, which also need glasses, are going through bankruptcy;

The number of TV viewers is growing every year, locking consumers in traditional and expensive technologies.

Facebook's Oculus Rift and other VR heads are selling well, given the volume of advertising and media hype, but as overall sales are falling sharply, their total sales will not have a major video game installation base for many years.

Moreover, Google glass completely failed to make people seem to have no hope for smart glasses.

Of course, Samsung Gear VR with Oculus Technology is doing well. At the CES2017 conference, Samsung's US president and COO Tim Baxter said Samsung had shipped 5 million Gear VR devices in total. However, many of these 5 million devices are freely available to the user, and 5 million of the number is just one of the 100 million points of the Samsung smartphone. Although Snapchat glasses also attract a lot of initial cheers, it is too early to know how it actually attracts mass market sales. and sunglasses, which are designed for narrow-range use cases, are mainly used outdoors, and are not ready for the ubiquitous ar spectacle depicted by Zuckerberg.

How to change equipment effectively

Even though sales of VR and AR devices are expected to grow massively, the idea that they will replace smartphones and televisions is wrong. Of course, these devices may someday be replaced in the future, but only by similar devices. In general, new technologies can be substituted for functionality, appearance, and ease of use, in the same way as existing technologies. It is clear that smartphones do not replace laptops. However, because smartphones are more convenient and easier to use, they have largely replaced pocket cameras and digital music players, and, equally importantly, do not significantly alter potential interpersonal behavior.

Television, by contrast, is mostly seen as an entertainment tool that people use to watch with their brains. People can watch from different places, from the sofa and squat to a standing yoga posture. As we often see, we inadvertently watch, do chores or other activities, and occasionally glance at the TV screen. In contrast, vr/ar often requires our full attention, requiring a specific posture, standing, and even movement of the body to interact with the content.

With this in mind, Vr/ar is more likely to replace Workbench computers, which can multitask on multiple screens and be used in 3D enterprise applications such as AutoCAD.

If Facebook were to do market research, they would find that consumers ' enthusiasm for AR and VR was not so strong, and that the actual sales of the heads were not as high as the market institutions predicted because of their bulky size. To increase people's interest in vr/ar, there is a need for lower hardware prices, better content, and fewer intrusive devices. However, these can not be solved in a short time, and will not overcome the basic problem of existence.

Media consumption is socially

Let's say that AR and VR will somehow replace our existing equipment, ignoring the social impact of media consumption that has existed since movies and radios, but even with the advent of smartphones, media consumption has not changed clearly. People want to enjoy the media that are important to them. People use this kind of consumption to create new or strengthen existing social experiences. When people listen to music together and watch videos together, they can respond to their enjoyment by observing the reactions of the people around them.

That's why many of our media habits are built around the social environment: watch TV with loved ones, loved one, enjoy movies and concerts together in the auditorium, watch sports games in a crowded bar, and more. Smartphones have been "distorted" but have not broken the social attributes of the media because they allow us to enjoy different kinds of content together so that we could easily enjoy it together.

The author suspects that Zuckerberg knows all this, and that is why he has invested a lot of manpower and resources on Facebook spaces to realize the social experience in virtual reality. However, from the point of view of VR head sales, not to mention the convenience of using MMO and virtual worlds, socializing with cartoon avatars is not something most of us crave.

AR Editor, the social attributes of the media are crucial, and the VR and AR estimates can cause more problems than the convenience. What's more, the value generated by the consumption of the head or glasses exceeds what people lose in the process. Therefore, I believe that there is nothing in the world to replace anything, not to mention that Vr/ar will replace mobile phones or television.

AR/VR will not be able to replace mobile phones and TVs as Facebook wishes.