[filoleg]

> why would they make a product that devours smartphones?

Likely because they expect AR to eventually devour smartphones, and they would rather devour it themselves than let others do so.

Plus, it will be a painful growth with rough edges anyway, so the iPhone faucet isn't turning off anytime soon. In fact, it would be quite a helpful source of revenue, until AR adoption reaches the masses and gets to the stage of actually being polished and commonplace enough to devour smartphones.

See: Apple slowly winding down iPod over the course of many years, as iPhone cannibalized it almost entirely.