Tim Cook Seems To Have Addressed A Million Dollar Question — Why It Took Apple Years To Enter AR Market

Apple Inc. AAPL is reportedly planning to debut its first mixed-reality, or MR, headset during the Annual Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, this year — and its CEO, Tim Cook, has finally addressed why it took the company seven years to introduce the headset. 

What Happened: Apple has not confirmed any concrete details about its upcoming headset or release date. However, Cook has provided a possible reason for the delayed debut of the highly-speculated device. 

Cook said that when Apple decides to enter a market, he asks himself some questions: “Can we make a significant contribution, in some kind of way, something that other people are not doing? Can we own the primary technology?”

“I’m not interested in putting together pieces of somebody else’s stuff. Because we want to control the primary technology. Because we know that’s how you innovate,” Cook told GQ. 

See Also: Apple Watch Users, It’s Time: Big OS Interface Overhaul In The Works, Says Gurman

Cook also discussed how years ago he was skeptical about Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google Glass, an early augmented reality product, and thought it would flop. He said his “thinking always evolves” because Steve Jobs taught him well. 

The Apple CEO’s vision is slightly different from Meta Platforms Inc.’s META CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of the metaverse. 

“If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people’s communication, people’s connection.”

Why It’s Important: Apple’s MR headset has been in the works since 2017. The company is likely to debut the headset on June 5, 2023, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman said in his weekly "Power On" newsletter.

Last month, Google announced that it halted sales of Glass Enterprise Edition 2 and will discontinue the software support on Sept. 15. However, the company said it would continue to look for ways to bring innovative AR experiences. 

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