Apple is about to jump into the world of augmented reality that's the word of tech journalist Robert Scoble, who claims that the Cupertino tech giant is working with German lens specialist Carl Zeiss to produce a pair of AR/mixed reality smart glasses which will be arriving in 2017.

According to Forbes Scoble shared on his Facebook page that a Zeiss employee has confirmed the rumors that Apple and Carl Zeiss AG are working on a light pair of augmented reality/mixed reality glasses that may be announced later this year.

This isn't the first time that Scoble has made any statement on Apple's AR plans. Back in November at WebSummit he said that Tim Cook and Steve Jobs sat down and talked about the future TV and in the next 11 months they are going to show the world about the future of TV, because they are building the PrimeSense senors right into the television into the ipad and iPad into the iPhone.

As per Tech Investor News PrimeSence is a 3D sensing company who created the tech for the original Xbox Kinect which was acquired by Apple in 2013. However, Augmented reality is very much different from virtual reality. The latter, which the likes of HTC, Oculus and Sony are making big waves in with their VR headsets, is a fully immersive digital world whereas augmented (or mixed reality) overlays digital aspects over the real world.

Google's Glass project used AR and now it's a huge buzz area in tech thanks to the likes of Microsoft's Hololens and the mysterious Magic Leap startup. Apple might announce an AR device in 2017 it would be a huge shock for other companies too. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook has praised AR in the past by calling it a core technology. He also added that AR will be a bigger business in the long term then VR.

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