High-end electronics company Bose Corp. is abandoning its augmented reality program 18 months after it launched glasses that use audio for interactive service delivery.

Bose’s “Frames,” launched in December 2018 were described at the time as the “world’s first audio augmented reality platform.”

The glasses were said to take “micro-acoustics and voice control to an entirely new level, debuting the future of mobile sound in the tiniest, thinnest, most lightweight Bose system ever.” If you have no idea what that means, neither did anyone else, since next to no one purchased them.

A Bose spokesperson told Protocol today that “Bose AR didn’t become what we envisioned,” and that “it’s not the first time our technology couldn’t be commercialized the way we planned but components of it will be used to help Bose owners in a different way. We’re good with that. Because our research is for them, not us.”

For the very few people who did purchase Bose’s Frames, the company’s AR apps will stop working in 30 days.

The decision by Bose to end its AR efforts comes as the company is facing financial pressure even before the commercial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company announced in January that it was closing all of its retail stores in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia as customers switched to e-commerce.

Augmented reality, alongside virtual reality, was hyped as the next great thing particularly through the end of the Web 2.0 era, with massive venture capital rounds and unicorn valuations to match. But it has yet to deliver on its promise. Although fundamentally there’s little wrong with the technology itself, outside of enterprise use — where Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens has found a solid niche market — there’s still no must-have game or application for the consumer market.

Companies trying to compete in the market have struggled and Bose isn’t the first to abandon its efforts. In 2019 both the Osterhout Design Group and Daqri shut down. Magic Leap, once the poster company for the potential for AR, with massive venture capital backing to match, switched to enterprise AR after failing dismally in the consumer market.

Photo: Bose