Snap, the parent company of social network Snapchat, on Tuesday launched its Specs augmented reality glasses, a major bet by a struggling company to stake out ground in the post-smartphone era.
Unveiled at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, Specs are the first standalone augmented reality glasses aimed at the general public, according to the company.
They will go on sale in the fall in the United States, the United Kingdom and France, and can be reserved starting Tuesday for $2,195.
Snap is targeting a middle ground: glasses more sophisticated than the models offered by Meta and soon by Google, which CEO Evan Spiegel sees more as a "phone accessory," and less bulky and costly than headsets, which he called "very capable and immersive, but ... cumbersome to wear and shut you out of the world."
"Ultimately, we believe that unless we can bring computing into the world where we live ... it's going to be very, very hard to make it feel more human," Spiegel told AFP.
