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Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset

(blog.google)
169 points thelastgallon | 4 comments | 22 Oct 25 16:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dangus ◴[22 Oct 25 17:21 UTC] No.45672277[source]▶
Oof, a little late to this bandwagon. Basically every player in this industry is dealing with weak/declining sales.
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1. jama211 ◴[22 Oct 25 18:03 UTC] No.45672877[source]▶
They’re not stupid. They know this won’t sell many items, they don’t expect it to. This is what you’d call a “market signal” product. It markets them as an innovative company, with their fingers in a little bit of every pie, and reminds everyone that they exist and make cool things. It’s valuable both for your company image and for your internal experimental development to do this sort of thing now and again.
replies(1): >>45674346 #
2. dangus ◴[22 Oct 25 19:57 UTC] No.45674346[source]▶
It would be a market signal product if this was 2017.
replies(1): >>45676551 #
3. hu3 ◴[22 Oct 25 23:41 UTC] No.45676551[source]▶
2012 Google Glasses were already a market signal. (ouch, to think Apple is a decade late here).

Galaxy XR are again a signal. Also serves to keep VR people employed.

replies(1): >>45677448 #
4. dangus ◴[23 Oct 25 02:17 UTC] No.45677448{3}[source]▶
This just means that Samsung/Google and Apple both profoundly misunderstand the market.

Meta Ray-Bans are a successful product that has a clear understanding of use case and effectively delivers a normal product with appealing aesthetics. Google glass could have led to that much earlier but the product looked like headgear for braces and the product concept was abandoned prematurely.

Galaxy XR is a late response to Vision Pro which itself is a late response to Meta Quest/Steam VR devices. The HTC Vive and Valve Index were the market signals, but that market signal has already proven to be something of a false one by the time Apple and Google got around to playing in the space.

There is really no market for general purpose computing VR devices. You are either gaming (niche), watching movies alone (niche again, rich but lonely Vision Pro users), or you’re taking POV pictures/video and doing light voice assistant/AI type tasks (Meta Ray-Bans, which are broadly appealing and even function as regular glasses for basically the same price as regular glasses).

Unsurprisingly, the only true hit with growing sales out of the use cases is the Meta Ray-Bans.

Let’s not forget that even the best headsets like Vision Pro are useless for a large chunk of people who get motion sick from them.

The successful product concept is the Meta Ray-Bans, and it’s crazy to me that they have zero competition especially from Apple who is all over customizable fashion wearables with the Apple Watch. The Vision Pro and Galaxy XR should have been cancelled.