I don't really understand why they play up the current state of AR. To me, it seems that AR is a fundamentally harder problem than VR. To do AR right, you need to solve all the problems of VR, then make the headset transparent, make the entire system portable, and give it the ability to understand the world around the user.

Pokemon GO is a cited example of the success of AR, but literally all the AR does is render your Pokemon over the camera feed, using the gyro to keep it mostly in the same orientation. It does nothing to make it feel like it's actually in the world. It moves as your perspective moves, and its perceived scale changes wildly. That doesn't even deserve to be called AR.

Most players also seem to turn the AR off, too, so it seems weird to attribute success to the concept. It's a gimmick that makes for cool concept videos like the one pictured in the article, but it's not nearly as interesting in reality.