Most office workers don't have a large, flat, solid, dark colored wall to look at. The reality of most office environments is that we're looking at co-workers, furniture, plants, windows, artwork, small cubicle walls, etc. If you have to rearrange offices to make AR usable then what's the point? Just give everyone a physical monitor. They're cheap.
I doubt that white walls will work well for AR backgrounds because it's additive light. There won't be enough contrast to make reading comfortable.
I'll admit that it wouldn't work for offices with the open floorplan nonsense where across the table is another human face staring back at you, but in my experience as a consultant visiting dozens of different IT offices around the US every year, most office workers I meet are in cubicles where it's trivial to hang a black piece of paper up with some thumbtacks.
Might not work for everyone, but it'd work for some people, which is quite often the case with basically every product that exists anywhere.
Maybe, just maybe it would work for people with ample wall space, in an environment with stable lighting, and good viewing distances. But how is it better than a monitor? How do you show your screen to another person? Do the economics makes sense at all? could the resolution and refresh rate be high enough?
Again, what does it give you that a really large monitor doesn't do better for less money?
Man HN always has a hard-on for "I can come up with one use case where it doesn't work, so therefore it will never work and everyone who wants it is stupid". It's ridiculous. Stop it. You don't want it. Fine. Some people do. That's also fine. Why can people on this site never understand that? And how often do people here say "no one will ever want product X" and then the very next headline is "Product X is top selling gadget of the year"?
Sometimes I want to lean back in my chair and look upward but still continue working. I can't do that with a monitor. I could with a head-mounted display. How the fuck does that hurt you in any way?
I'm not saying that it wouldn't work for anyone. I'm just saying that is a general display tool for office work, it's clearly inferior for most common use cases. I mean shit, if it becomes a thing, I'd try it. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but this sounds like the promise of serious productivity on tablets it was great for a narrow slice of use cases and crap for everything else.
Instead of tacking up a black piece of paper on the wall wouldn't it be better to just hang a monitor there? Flat panel monitors get larger, thinner, sharper, and cheaper every year. It's a lot easier to collaborate with colleagues when you can both look at the same physical monitor.
I doubt that white walls will work well for AR backgrounds because it's additive light. There won't be enough contrast to make reading comfortable.