Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke spoke about the potential of augmented reality through high-tech glasses since at least 2017, and his company is getting one step closer to making that a reality. Today Hanke tweeted an intriguing teaser image that looks like a close-up view of AR glasses, complete with lenses and a small speaker. So far, it’s unclear whether these will try to expand down the path of Google Glass and HoloLens, or if they’re meant for audio-only augmentation, like Amazon Echo Frames powered by Alexa.
Exciting to see the progress we are making to enable new types of devices that leverage our platform … pic.twitter.com/yYglk4q89G
– John Hanke (@johnhanke) March 29, 2021
In 2019 Niantic announced a partnership with Qualcomm to work on AR glasses, before clarify that he had “no plans” to make his own material and that he was in fact building reference models that others could make. Since then, it is acquired a startup to help realize their AR plans globally, and announced an expanded partnership with Nintendo that will include a new Pikmin game will be launched soon.