Oh, if you mean AR including a brain monitor than yes, that's a whole different beast. But aren't we still far away from that? Most people understand AR as a wearable headset screen like google glass or hololens.

But I get what you mean, the learning curve is much higher than in smartphone technology in certain aspects. But smartphones themselves were inherently difficult to build too. Not so much the hardware but more the software. They required a whole new operating system build from scratch. If it weren't for google or apple having the manpower, we could still be using clamshell phones even today.