After some fairly underwhelming and high profile first attempts, perhaps the very concept of augmented reality now has a long way to go to repair the damage.
But there is a growing acceptance that AR is coming, it's just how the technology or devices are integrated into more everyday items that consumers use, which will ultimately make the difference.
Though the Next Big Thing won’t appear for a while, we know pretty much what it will look like.
It will be a lightweight, always-on wearable that obliterates the divide between the stuff we see on screens and the stuff we see when we look up from our screens.
There have been a litany of disappointments so far: Google Glass’s humiliating stumble; Snapchat’s low-selling Spectacles; Magic Leap’s epically late headset; and the disappointing initial sales of Oculus’s own virtual-reality headsets.
But you can write those off as baby steps, because all the big companies are going long on augmented reality.
And in 2018, you’ll see the building blocks on your mobile phones.