INTRODUCTION
At Smart Contact Lens Inc. we are developing a unique, futuristic, and revolutionary AR & VR-enabled smart contact lens (SCL) system with an embedded display. SCL technology plugs into the sense of sight to deliver information in an enabling and enriching fashion. We believe our smart contact lens system has the potential to become the major AR & VR platform and, eventually, completely replace most smart devices, such as smartphones, iPads, Oculus, HoloLens, and Magic Leap sets.
SUCCESS FACTORS
Expertise: We started our research in 2013 and filed our first patents in 2014. Smart Contact Lens Inc. has established in-house expertise to build and implement the AR/VR-enabled smart contact lens with various unique enabling capabilities.
First to Market: Smart Contact Lens Inc. is positioned to be “first to market” with AR & VR-enabled SCL that makes use of peripheral and focused vision, enabling natural use of the human eyes. We have invented, and are further developing, smart contact lens technology that enables a natural AR/VR experience solely with contacts. While there is some competition, it does not provide a versatile solution comparable to ours.
Intellectual Property (IP): Smart Contact Lens Inc. will continue to partner with RaayonNova LLC, which holds a rich IP portfolio of pending and granted patents covering various key aspects of AR/VR contact lens technology. This portfolio is both domestic and international, providing strong IP protection to Smart Contact Lens Inc. worldwide. We will continue to build our IP portfolio in the domain of smart contact lens technology.
Partnerships: We are actively exploring partnership opportunities with universities and companies researching or developing various aspects of smart contact lens technology.
MARKET SUMMARY
The AR & VR market segments are projected to hit $110-170 billion by 2025, with AR at $80-120 billion and VR at $30-$50 billion. Further, it is expected for the AR & VR market segment to hit a staggering $1 trillion-plus by 2030.
However, these figures represent the current projection of AR & VR adoption based on existing or planned headset technology. While the exact growth of AR & VR is hard to predict, the technology will enrich lives and increase productivity; adoption is therefore expected to be quick once the technology is available. As the technology matures and grows, the disruptive nature of AR & VR is likely to increase market size and penetration manyfold in the midterm.
In 2018, Heather Bellini, a world-renowned and reputable expert on the AR & VR markets from Goldman Sachs, projected that the markets would reach $100 billion by 2025, equal to the desktop market today.
More recent projections are even more impressive. According to GlobeNewswire/Market Insider, “The global augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market is projected to account for a revenue of $1,274.4 billion in 2030, rising from $37.0 billion in 2019, progressing at a robust CAGR of 42.9% during the forecast period (2020-2030).”
These numbers speak volumes.
Another significant factor propelling the adoption of AR & VR tech is the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing multi-faceted systemic shock, which has caused wide-ranging changes in many sectors. These changes have affected work, shopping, entertainment, education, and many other aspects of life. COVID-19 is expected to further accelerate the adoption of AR & VR technology globally.
We are striving to be the leader in the smart contact lens platform market. Our value proposition is based on our belief that contact lenses will serve as the ultimate AR & VR platform. As a platform with virtually unlimited capabilities in terms of bringing contextually relevant information to the eye, it’s a primary candidate for mass adoption. It will dominate all other types of smart devices for AR & VR applications now in existence or being planned in the short term. In the long term, we believe SCL technology will become the major platform to execute AR & VR applications, single-handedly replacing all other types of smart devices.
Our ideal customer is anyone who uses, or could use, smart devices such as a cellphone or an AR & VR headset. However, we expect our first adopters to be consumers with ophthalmological problems, as our SCL is also a medical device, inter alia.
The smart contact lens we are developing has many medical applications with a variety of vision correction capabilities. The market for corrective contact lenses is about $19 billion now, as per a recent Grand View Research report, with a projected CAGR of about 8 percent. It has an estimated client base of 45 million in the US alone, according to CDC fast facts, and over 150 million users globally, according to a University of Birmingham publication. Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization, 1.3 billion people worldwide experience visual deficiency, which gives us reason to believe that the current contact lens market has a large capacity for growth.
There are a wide variety of applications of SCL to psychometrics, making possible applications that have not been feasible till now. Psychometrics is heavily overlooked by most players in the field of SCL tech. At RaayonNova we are developing systems and methodologies that will allow us to detect and track users’ psychometric parameters and enable applications that make use of such information. Such psychometric SCL applications would be behavior adaptive, reactive, and tracking and mood modifying. They could also adapt to the user’s level of difficulty in engaging with mental tasks and so on. This is a very useful and empowering venture. We are the first company that is targeting this subject for the SCL platform.
In the short term, we strive to create viable, usable, enabling, and safe SCL devices wearable over the cornea of the eye. The device we are developing is empowering users with additional information about the world and enabling unprecedented informational interactions with the real, augmented, virtual, or merged worlds.
In the midterm, we foresee smart contact lenses becoming the main vehicle for informational computer-human interaction.
COMPETITION
Until recently, there was no direct competition, while tangential competition lags technologically in solving the major issues with AR/VR-enabled smart contacts. Current competitors, such as Google, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, EGPL, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Medella Health, fall into several categories; developers of smart contact lenses as medical devices; developers of smart contact lenses with auto-focusing mechanisms; or developers of smart contact lenses with image capturing devices. Recent market entrant Mojo Vision is proposing an AR/VR solution that is substantially different from our technology. In contrast to Mojo Vision, our technology utilizes a semi-transparent display and enables the full use of both focused and peripheral vision. The use of the focused and peripheral sections of vision is crucial for the natural use of a human’s sense of sight. Our technology empowers the natural use of the eyes to refocus on different parts of an image superimposed on an embedded display. It also allows the user to control the entire system with their eyes only. This enables a multitude of applications that are feasible only with our technology. Our strong international IP portfolio endows us with viable IP protection from any competition.
OPPORTUNITY
A high-quality, empowering, and discreet AR & VR solution would involve the use of smart contact lenses with an embedded display component, wearable directly over the cornea of the eye. However, there are several technological and usability limitations specific to contact lenses with embedded displays that need to be recognized and surmounted.
VALUE PROPOSITION AND SOLUTION
Our proprietary, “patent pending” AR & VR-enabled smart contact lens (AR & VR SCL) technology surmounts a number of the existing limitations, thereby making smart contact lenses practical and useful. We propose a unique AR or VR-enabled SCL system with an embedded display, to be worn on one or both eyes, and an integrated semi-transparent microdisplay. The display projects light directly into the retina of the eye and allows for both focus and peripheral vision, thus enabling the natural use of the eye in an enriching fashion. Our patented technology also enables the user to control the entire SCL system using an eye as a pointing device. We propose many useful, unique, and revolutionary features as part of our SCL tech.