I read patents and translate them into business intelligence for a living. One pattern keeps showing up that I think is worth talking about.

Every major computing platform in the last 30 years has followed the same cycle. New hardware launches. Critics mock it. A handful of people build on it anyway. A small percentage of those early builders end up absurdly wealthy. The majority don’t. But the window of opportunity for those who try is real, and it’s short.

I think AR/VR is entering that window right now.

Critics have been wrong about every major platform at launch

When the iPad launched in 2010, tech media called it “just a big iPod touch.” Google’s Eric Schmidt asked what the difference was between a large phone and a tablet. Business Insider called it “a big yawn.” The iPad Pro got a second wave of criticism in 2015 for being overpriced, with reviewers saying the software was laughably limited for a device that cost $799+.

Steven Chan didn’t care. He was a math student in Australia who built a note-taking app for the original iPad in 2011 because handwriting on the thing was terrible. GoodNotes was a one-person company for five years. When the Apple Pencil launched alongside iPad Pro in 2015, everything changed. Students discovered they could replace stacks of notebooks with one device and one app. Notability rode the same wave. Today, GoodNotes has 24 million monthly active users, hit a $1 billion valuation in 2024, revenue over $50 million, and 99% of downloads still come from word of mouth. A math student in a dorm room, building for a device that critics dismissed, now runs a billion-dollar company.

The App Store followed the same arc. It launched in 2008 with 552 apps. Within a year, 1 billion downloads. Angry Birds started as a student project from a Nokia-sponsored game competition in Helsinki. That game turned into 4.5 billion downloads, a $350M box office movie, and Sega eventually acquired the parent company for $776M.

And the failures carry forward too. Julie Wainwright ran Pets.com, the poster child for dot-com collapse. She was called “the dumbest person in the Valley.” But the e-commerce instincts she built at Pets.com powered her next company. She launched The RealReal in her mid-50s and took it to a $1.5 billion IPO. She says she was 17 years too early. The platform experience didn’t disappear when the company did.

New platforms create a brief period where distribution barriers are low and the installed base is growing fast. The people who build during that window, even when their first product fails, carry something forward.

The companies spending billions on AR/VR aren’t guessing

I read patent filings every week. Here’s what keeps showing up:

Apple filed over 5,000 patents related to Vision Pro. Meta holds 200+ AR/VR patents and keeps acquiring companies in the space (CTRL-labs, BigBox VR, Scape Technologies). Globally, around 390,000 patent applications are pending for AR, VR, and XR. Sony, Microsoft, and Samsung are all filing heavily.

But the number that actually matters isn’t patents. EssilorLuxottica (the company that makes Ray-Ban) sold over 7 million Meta smart glasses in 2025. That’s up from 2 million combined across 2023 and 2024. Revenue tripled in the first half of 2025. In 60% of European Ray-Ban stores, the smart glasses are the number one seller. IDC forecasts 18.7 million smart glasses units by 2029.

This isn’t VR headset hype. This is actual units moving off shelves, worn by people outside.

Meta’s bet isn’t failing, it’s evolving

Reality Labs has lost tens of billions. People love pointing that out. But the VR headset that isolates you from the real world wasn’t the right product. Smart glasses that enhance your day while looking like normal sunglasses? That’s what’s selling.

Meta extended their EssilorLuxottica partnership “into the next decade.” They’re planning production capacity of 10 million units per year by 2026. Samsung and Google are both building competing glasses. 9+ new companies entered the smart glasses space in early 2025 alone.

Apple hasn’t walked away either. Over 5,000 patents for Vision Pro. At least seven XR projects reportedly in development through 2028. Vision Pro sales have been modest (estimated 200-250K units in 2024), but Apple is clearly working toward lighter, cheaper hardware. AI is accelerating everything here. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses already use Meta AI for real-time assistance, translation, and visual recognition.

The first apps on any platform are always simple. What you can build in this space.

Think about what sold first on every new platform. Simple utility. The first hit iPhone apps were flashlights and tip calculators. Beat Saber was one of the first VR breakouts. GoodNotes was “let me take notes on this thing” and it became a billion-dollar company.

For AR glasses, the first killer apps will probably be just as straightforward. Real-time translation overlays. Hands-free recipe guides while cooking. Navigation that doesn’t require pulling out your phone. Job-site reference tools for tradespeople. Live captioning for the hard of hearing. The developer ecosystem for these glasses is thin right now, and the installed base is growing every quarter.

The same pattern is playing out in AI simultaneously. OpenAI launched a GPT Store in early 2024 and a full App Directory by December 2025. 3 million custom GPTs were built before the store even opened. The revenue model for builders is still being worked out, but the parallel to the early App Store is obvious.

Building has never been easier. Distribution is the hard part, and being early on a platform is one of the few ways to solve distribution without money.

Most early builders don’t get rich, but the ones who show up early carry something forward

I’m not selling a get-rich-quick story. The early App Store produced more heartbreak than wealth. Most VR indie studios struggled.

But the people who built during those windows developed skills and instincts that put them years ahead of everyone else. Wainwright’s Pets[dot]com “failure” gave her the exact playbook for a billion-dollar company. Founders who shipped janky VR apps in 2016 are the same people companies hire as spatial computing consultants today.

The hardware is selling. The patents are stacking up. The big companies are committed for the long haul. And the developer ecosystem on these platforms is still wide open.