A look at the lidar industry and Apple's potential role within it, as the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max become the first mass market phones to adopt the technology
How Apple made affordable lidar with no moving parts for the iPhone. — At Tuesday's unveiling of the iPhone 12, Apple touted the capabilities of its new lidar sensor. Tweets: @sdelevator , @l4stewar , @jakevoytko , @binarybits , @raysototech , @johnphillips185 , @sahilasaservice , @mattmiesnieks , @thomasnigro , @rykowskizeerak , @_sam_m_harris , @stshank , and @nikillinit Tweets: SelfDrivingElevator / @sdelevator : “But Elon said Lidar is a crutch.” “Maybe Tesla should enter the phone business and show Apple how it's done.” https://arstechnica.com/... Leigh Stewart / @l4stewar : Was never quite sure what the difference between LiDAR and TOF is. Assumed they were roughly different names for the same thing. Thats what this article more or less says - very nice short explanation of TOF/LiDAR tech we're seeing in smart phones https://ios.gadgethacks.com/ ... Jacob Voytko / @jakevoytko : When I first graduated in 2008, I worked at a computer vision research lab. It's crazy to see that the specialized lidar/mapping projects that cost a team of researchers, multiple months, and $x00,000 are now just freely available in an iPhone Timothy B. Lee / @binarybits : Long-range lidar used to cost around $75,000. But the same technologies that let Apple put short-range lidar in a smartphone could make long-range lidar cheap enough to become a standard feature of cars. https://arstechnica.com/... Ray Soto / @raysototech : A LiDAR sensor within the iPhone should not be a surprise. It's another strong indicator of Apple's intention beyond mobile screens. More importantly, this is a meaningful way to introduce the technology and to build an understanding of it's value. John Henry Phillips / @johnphillips185 : Thoughts and prayers with all those that started an MA in Digital Archaeology two weeks ago only for Apple to announce you can do LIDAR on the next iPhone Sahil / @sahilasaservice : I've gotten a lot of questions about LIDAR on the iPhone 12 and what it means for 3D. In a nutshell, LIDAR is great for making point clouds. Great for scanning a room. Great for placing 3D models. Not for making finished models. What's missing: topology and PBR textures. Matt Miesnieks / @mattmiesnieks : Great explanation for anyone wondering about the diff btw Apple LIDAR & other IR ToF sensors cc @dens They all aim to deliver the same piece of data - a high quality depth frame. Longest range, highest frame rate, highest resolution, lowest watts are the drivers of quality https://twitter.com/... Thomas Nigro / @thomasnigro : @Snap have already announced AR support for LIDAR sensor on iPhone 12 Pro, while Spark AR (from Facebook) still very poorly handles world-facing tracking. One seems to be pushing more than the other. Sebastian Rykowski Zeerak / @rykowskizeerak : Because technology is deflationary cc @JeffBooth Lidar cost $75,000 a decade ago, now it's in the new iPhone. https://arstechnica.com/... Sam / @_sam_m_harris : Who would have predicted that Apple would add LIDAR before Tesla. Stephen Shankland / @stshank : @tchebotarev Yes. Lidar has been around for decades. It's OK to treat it stylistically like sonar and radar, terms long since stripped of their acronym meanings. Marketing people, including those at Apple, go for “LiDAR” I imagine because they think it sounds or looks fancier. Nikhil Krishnan / @nikillinit : New iPhone has LIDAR - lets brainstorm some ways this might be useful in healthcare quarter-baked ideas -autonomous carts in hospitals -caregivers can use to map homes to assess risks (e.g. fall risks) -putting overlays onto patients before things like surgeries
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a three-year arc: reporting back in 2017 flagged Apple working on a rear-facing 3D laser system for better depth detection and autofocus (the rear-facing laser report), and in 2019 sources said Apple was developing its own lidar while evaluating four suppliers' tech for self-driving cars (those supplier talks). With the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, that work lands as a solid-state, no-moving-parts sensor in the first mass-market phones to carry lidar.
First-order effects
- AR developers get depth-sensing hardware at iPhone scale immediately, and Snap is already positioned among the first movers with a dedicated iPhone 12 Pro lens built for the LiDAR Scanner.
- The four lidar suppliers Apple evaluated in 2019 now face a customer demonstrating it can ship a competent solid-state unit in-house, shrinking Apple's need for external sensors.
Second-order effects
- Rival phonemakers are pushed to match depth sensing or cede the AR ground Snap-style apps are racing to occupy on iPhone 12 Pro units hitting pre-orders starting October 16 (pre-orders open October 16).
- Automotive-grade lidar vendors gain an unexpected pricing problem: a consumer phone now publishes a de facto benchmark for what a no-moving-parts depth sensor costs at volume.
Third-order effects
- If Apple's in-house sensor lineage traces back to the self-driving program, consumer phone volumes become the cost-curve engine that automotive lidar economics depend on, tying phone roadmaps to autonomy timelines.
- Successor iPhones extending the depth pipeline — such as the iPhone 13 Pro's macro photography mode (macro mode on iPhone 13 Pro) — would confirm lidar as a permanent stack component rather than a one-generation novelty.
The trend: Lidar is migrating from an expensive automotive-only sensor toward a commodity phone component, with smartphone volumes increasingly setting its cost curve.