Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 08, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
At Apple’s annual launch event this week, it revealed new iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, all of which were refinements of previous models.
What Apple didn’t release, however, was a new kind of product — Apple’s “next big thing” which customers hope will be extremely cool and investors hope will drive another decade or more of Apple growth, like the iPhone did before it.
In previous years, Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have emphasized “augmented reality,” or AR, which is a term for a collection of technologies that use advanced cameras and modern chips to be able to understand where objects are in relation to the user and place computer graphics or information over a screen showing the real world.
Eventually, believers like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg say augmented reality technologies will be bundled into a headset or glasses, which could represent a sea-change for the technology industry like how the original iPhone’s touchscreen created billion-dollar companies.
But at Tuesday’s event, augmented reality technology didn’t make an appearance, except for a brief mention of one AR app that runs on iPads.
Justine Ezarik, who goes by iJustine on her popular YouTube page, brought up the lack of AR at the launch in a video interview with Cook posted after the event.
In his answer, Cook repeated some of the things he’s said about AR in the past, but continued to be very bullish on the technology, calling himself “AR fan number one.”
“I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we that we will look back on one day and went, how did we live our lives without it?” Cook said.
Cook said that the main uses for AR technology include education, collaboration and shopping for furniture while making sure it fits in the user’s home.
“And that’s at the early innings of AR,” Cook said. “it will only get better.”
Competitors releasing glasses
AR backers say that wearing computer glasses will be a normal, everyday experience, like using a smartphone is today.
Apple has never confirmed it is building AR headsets, despite buying several startups working on key building blocks like transparent screens built into lenses and hiring hundreds of employees to work in its Technology Development Group on the project.
Some of Apple’s closest competitors have already released headsets.
The lack of AR announcements at Apple’s event is not a hint that Apple has given up on the technology. Apple’s launch events are focused on hardware and products customers can buy now — not providing clues about releases in upcoming years.
None of Apple’s new devices got AR hardware, unlike in the past few years, when some models added lidar sensors that can measure how far away an object is. The new iPhone Pro’s cameras do have improved night mode, which could be a useful feature for headsets in low-light.
So far, in public, Apple has generally treated AR as a software feature. It built tools called ARKit and RealityKit for app developers to make their own iPhone AR apps without doing hard physics like triangulating the location of the user or detecting hands and faces.
Those tools did make an appearance before Apple’s event. Users with AR-capable iPhones could download a file from Apple’s website that created a portal to a California landscape, which was the theme of Apple’s launch.
Apple’s new city navigation feature in Apple Maps.
Apple
The iPhone software launching on Monday, iOS 15, includes a mode where Apple Maps overlays walking directions onto the real world — big arrows telling the user where to go, on the iPhone’s screen — in a preview of what could be a major feature for a headset.
One challenge about these technologies is what to call them. Some people in the industry prefer the term “mixed reality,” which is less technical-sounding. The CEOs of Microsoft and Facebook, which are perhaps the most enthusiastic big companies about augmented reality, have started to talk about a “metaverse,” or a digital world overlaid on top of the real world.
Cook and Apple, for now, are sticking with “augmented reality.”
“There’s clearly different words out there. I’ll stay away from the buzzwords and for the moment just call it augmented reality,” Cook said in an interview with Time published this week.
Following a disappointing revenue forecast in its quarterly earnings report late Wednesday, Salesforce’s stock slumped 8%, bringing its decline for 2025 to 28%. That’s the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Revenue increased 10% in the fiscal second quarter from a year earlier, cracking double-digit growth for the first time since early 2024. Sales of $10.24 billion topped the average analyst estimate of $10.14 billion, and earnings per share also exceeded expectations.
However, for the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce said revenue will be $10.24 billion to $10.29 billion, while analysts were expecting $10.29 billion, according to LSEG.
Salesforce regularly touts its investments in artificial intelligence and the advancements in its software as a service, or SaaS, but the company hasn’t been lifted by the AI boom in the same way as many of its tech peers — particularly those focused on infrastructure.
There’s also a concern on Wall Street that AI is going to eat away at much of the software sector.
“While the investor community oozes angst over the future of SaaS, the here and now from Salesforce, while impressive at scale, is not enough to reshape the narrative,” wrote analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a report on Wednesday. The analysts have a buy rating on the stock.
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Salesforce is dealing with challenges selling marketing and commerce products, Robin Washington, the company’s president and chief operating and financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts.
In its earnings release, Salesforce said it closed over 12,500 total deals for Agentforce, which can automate the handling of customer service questions. That includes 6,000 paid deals. The company said that over 40% of bookings for Agentforce and its data cloud came from existing customers.
CEO Marc Benioff maintained his optimistic tone, downplaying concerns about the AI threat to software and telling analysts on the earnings call that “we are seeing one of the greatest transformations” in the space.
“To hear some of this nonsense that’s out there in social media or in other places, and people say the craziest things, but it’s not grounded in any customer truth,” Benioff said.
Salesforce kept its full-year revenue outlook but now sees higher earnings. The company is targeting $11.33 to $11.37 in adjusted earnings per share on $41.1 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue.
Figma shares plummeted nearly 20% on Thursday, falling to the lowest price since the design software vendor’s IPO in July after the company reported earnings for the first time as a public company.
Results for the second quarter were largely inline with expectations, as Figma had issued preliminary results a little over a month ago. Revenue increased 41% from a year earlier to $249.6 million, slightly topping analyst estimates of $248.8 million, according to LSEG.
Analysts at Piper Sandler described the report as “largely a non-event,” but noted that the “shares have witnessed hyper-volatility” following their 250% surge in the trading debut.
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Since closing at $115.50 on its first day, the stock has lost more than half its value, lowering the company’s market cap to about $27 billion.
For the third quarter, Figma forecasted revenue of between $263 million and $265 million, which would represent about 33% growth at the middle of the range. The LSEG consensus was $256.8 million.
Figma’s IPO was significant for Silicon Valley and the tech sector broadly as it represented one of the highest-profile offerings in years and signaled Wall Street’s growing appetite for growth. The market had been in a multiyear lull that began in early 2022, when inflation was soaring and interest rates were on the rise.
Figma reported a 129% net retention rate, a reflection of expansion with existing customers. The figure was down from 132% in the first quarter.
A JetBlue Airways Airbus A321-231 departs San Diego International Airport en route to New York on March 4, 2025 in San Diego, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
JetBlue Airways plans to install Amazon‘s Project Kuiper on some of its airplanes to bolster in-flight Wi-Fi, the companies announced Thursday, in a vote of confidence for the nascent internet satellite service.
The technology will be added to about a quarter of the airline’s fleet, with the rollout beginning in 2027 and expected to be complete in 2028, JetBlue President Marty St. George said on a call with reporters.
The team-up is a significant win for Amazon, which has been working to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low-Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk‘s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
Amazon has sent up 102 satellites through a series of rocket launches since April. It’s aiming to meet a deadline by the Federal Communications Commission, which requires it to have about 1,600, or half of its full constellation, in orbit by the end of July 2026.
The company hopes to begin commercial service later this year.
“Even though we still have a lot more work to do, we’re super excited to have JetBlue as the first airline customer for Kuiper,” Chris Weber, Kuiper’s vice president of sales and marketing, told reporters.
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Starlink has signed up a growing number of airlines to use its services. JetBlue is Kuiper’s first airline partner, though Amazon has signed several deals recently as it tries to expand the service, including with European plane maker Airbus in April.
JetBlue has offered free in-flight internet for years through a partnership with Viasat, which operates a network of geostationary, or GEO, satellites. That partnership will continue, St. George said.
He praised Amazon’s satellite service, saying Kuiper offers high speed, low latency and high reliability compared with GEO satellite networks. JetBlue could eventually use a combination of low-Earth orbit and GEO satellites for in-flight internet, St. George added.
U.S. airlines have been working to improve their in-flight Wi-Fi, which has long been derided for slow speeds and high prices.
Delta Air Lines followed JetBlue in unveiling complimentary connectivity in 2023 for its SkyMiles loyalty program members. Hawaiian Airlines is using Starlink for free in-flight Wi-Fi, and Alaska Airlines, which acquired that carrier last year, recently said it would outfit its planes with the same service.
United Airlines is also working to equip its planes to offer its loyalty program members free Wi-Fi through Starlink. American Airlines, for its part, in April said it plans to have free in-flight internet on most of its planes next year for members of its AAdvantage program.