Chief Executive Tim Cook has been talking about augmented reality for so long that it’s easy to forget just how big it could be for Apple, and for the entire tech industry.

Depending on which expert you listen to, AR is either destined to be one more way we access the internet, or will subsume our experience of it completely and be an essential gateway to the metaverse that so many companies claim they are now building. In either case, the impact of an AR headset and the market for it could be huge, and several factors—from its growing prowess developing microchips to its army of loyal app developers—suggest Apple is uniquely positioned to build a moat around its AR business rather quickly, just as it did with the iPhone….$Apple(AAPL)$