Even when Apple telegraphs its hardware strategy, it’s proving to be nearly impossible for startups to beat them.
The company’s executives have been motioning interest in following their runaway success on mobile with hefty investments in augmented reality, something that has led to the rise of dozens of venture-backed startups hoping to beat Apple to the punch by creating their own AR headsets.
In 2019, this vision collapsed for some of the most recognizable AR startups as reality proved less predictable than executives at these startups had imagined. A trio of shutdowns this year painted the root cause — overreach, framed by high burn rates and an overly optimistic attitude toward respective software ecosystems taking off.
My prediction earlier this year of a rough 2019 is exactly what happened.
ODG
At the beginning of the year, I reported on the collapse of Osterhout Design Group. The augmented reality startup was an early pioneer in the AR space that capitalized on industry excitement to raise a $58 million Series A in 2016. Following that raise, the company overreached, expanding its product lines even as it failed to squash manufacturing bugs i ..
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