Is Apple Cooking Up A New TRAILBLAZING Product?

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was on Tuesday granted a patent for head-mounted display technology that is tangentially related to see-through, or augmented reality, units like Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Project Glass.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved Apple’s application for “Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays,” which, though it does not directly describe a device like the head-mounted display augmented reality glasses currently being developed by Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), does mention that the technology can be used in similar see-through solutions.

The patent, which Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) first applied for in 2006, presents various solutions regarding peripheral light transmission in an attempt to address common usability issues associated with head-mounted displays, or HMDs, which have not yet emerged in the consumer market. The patent tries to solve problems related to eye strain caused by the display’s relative closeness to the eye with “peripheral treatment” of a user’s field of view.

But more significant than Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) developing a solution to a common HMD problem is that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is working on HMDs in the first place. The patent notes that the peripheral treatment can be used in so-called diffractive optical arrangements like light-guided optical elements (LOE) or binocular light-guided optical elements (BLOE), both of which use thin transparent substrates to display source images. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is employing a similar method for its Project Glass, an Internet-connected headset that displays information through digital images and video on a small transparent display in front of a user’s right eye.

Could Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) be working on a similar sort of eyewear, or could the company be planning the technology for a different device, the likes of which doesn’t yet exist?

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