Apple’s upcoming developer conference sparks rumours of NFT trading cards

In the days leading up to Apple’s 33rd annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), will be held between June 6 - 10, speculations are running wild in the community. Will NFT trading cards and Extended Reality earn a place in Apple's roster of products? 

The Worldwide Developer Conference is an event that features the latest Apple innovations. Apple has unveiled plans to showcase new software and devices, including iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, watchOS 9 and tvOS 16.

In addition, forums such as MacRumours, which cover Apple’s innovations and debates on the tech giant’s accomplishments, discovered that clicking on the Memoji characters will reveal an augmented reality mode along with three trading card characters available to be claimed. However, it is possible that the Memoji trading cards are just an extension on the existing AR capabilities without Blockchain integration.

The Memoji characters are representative of Apple's branding strategies in recent years as Apple recognized the cultural link of memes and brand marketing. 

The NFT cards bear an uncanny visual resemblance to RTFKT Studio’s CloneX’s NFT avatars and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends Series 2 animated cards, leading the NFT community to speculate about the potential of future Apple NFTs. 

In the past year, Apple has been gradually integrating into the Web3 space, with its Apple Pay and MetaMask integration. 

Tim Cook expressed optimism about the potential for the societal and public adoption of augmented reality and Metaverse technologies during Apple’s Q1 2022 earnings call. He also discussed the company’s intentions to 'invest accordingly' in the emerging sector.

However, the company has also run into technical setbacks in its endeavours, its  mixed-reality headset, that offers virtual and augmented reality functions was scheduled for release at the WWDC conference but will be pushed back due to technical difficulties in its development process. 

Photo: Apple Inc.