In challenge to Meta, Apple expected to unveil mixed-reality headset

Apple is expected to announce a new headset that will blend real and virtual video at its annual software developer conference next week.

Apple Inc. is widely expected to announce a new headset that will blend video of the outside world with the virtual one at its annual software developer conference next week.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta Platforms Inc.'s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are jockeying to define how consumers will put to use a new generation of technology where real and digital worlds converge.

Zuckerberg has laid out a vision of the "metaverse," a parallel digital universe where people will gather together to work and play, and has had products out for years.

Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak, by contrast, recently called the metaverse "a word I'll never use." And Apple's device so far is just a rumour. Apple's presentations at its Worldwide Developers Conference start at 10 a.m. PDT (1700 GMT) in California on Monday. Until now, the company best known for iPhones has limited its augmented-reality efforts to technology that works on existing devices, for instance by enabling retailers' apps to show virtual furniture in a customer's living room.

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"Meta and Apple are competing with each other. The difference is that Meta is doing it publicly, while Apple is doing it privately," said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

Analysts say that the Apple device, which Bloomberg has reported could cost near $3,000 and look like a pair of ski goggles, is a place holder of sorts. The Cupertino, California, company's grand vision remains to produce a pair of transparent glasses that overlay digital information on the real world and can be worn all day, every day, those analysts say, but in the face of competition, it decided to launch its own goggles.