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  • Augmented Reality has Reached the Tipping Point: 10 Tips to take advantage of AR

    Augmented Reality has Reached the Tipping Point: 10 Tips to take advantage of AR

    We hear a lot about Extended Reality these days and, while neither AR or VR has reached maturity, AR is already having a significant impact on most business sectors. Retailers, advertisers, educators, travel experts, and more have begun to incorporate AR into their products, services, and marketing campaigns.

    In a couple of years, 5G will be a reality, at least for all of the US, and probably many countries in the European Union and Asia. If you are just learning about 5G and wondering how it is going to impact AR’s growth and subsequently your products or services, you are not alone. 5G is the fifth generation cellular network technology that will allow us to stream content directly into mobile devices and computers, in most cases without a download.

    With over 1,000 AR companies already in existence, sometimes it’s hard to understand the landscape.  Are they all the same? Which company or technology will suit your needs?, What kind of AR, or aspect of it, matters to you? I hope the tips below help you better understand your options, and how you may start to develop a solid strategy, use cases, and analyses to leverage AR for your business moving forward.

    1. Focus on mobile. It is the real addressable market and is being propelled by both Apple and Google,with critical hardware innovation. Over a billion devices are now AR ready.

    2. I Love Magic Leap, and Hololens, and others, but consumers, and most small and medium businesses are not ready to spend thousands of dollars per device any time soon (and perhaps never will be.). Furthermore consumers are not going to walk around with bulky HMDs that make Googles’ smart glasses from a few years ago look cool. These kinds of devices are many years away from becoming mainstream (other than in amusement parks and some entertainment venues).

    3. Current market-leading technologies you should learn about, including their differences are ARKit, ARCore, Vuforia, Wikitude for software and Qualcomm if you are interested in hardware.

    4. Leading enabling services and platforms you should investigate are: SparxWorks, Augmania, Spark Studio, Lens Studio (Snapchat).

    5. Three key things you need to be mindful of so past mistakes are not repeated

      1. No proprietary authoring environment! Pay attention to services that let you leverage your team’s expertise, the tools you know how to use, and enable creativity and that basically makes it easy and efficient to publish AR. Don’t go down the Betamax hole!

      2. Choose a platform or development solution that is flexible, efficient and easy to use.

      3. When you investigate financing options, remember that flexible licensing plans are hallmarks of companies committed to being true partners. No one shoe can fit all!

    6. Usability, as it relates to your products and services, is extremely important. Do your homework, create strong use cases, be practical, sometimes less is more.

    7. Understand what tools, platforms, or distribution ecosystems can actually reach your market. For example don’t try to reach baby boomers with SnapChat, or millennials with Facebook.

    8. Seek the right help. If you don’t have an in-house expert seek a consultant that has real experience, and is actively engaged in developing real solutions, Accenture, Media Monks, RYOT, SparxWorks, are some companies that come to mind.

    9. Understand the legal issues that can arise from the use of AR, and VR for that matter.

    10. And finally, you don’t have to hit a half-court shot. To use a well worn but true cliché, Rome was not built in a day. Take it step by step. Start simple. Remember what your products and brands are about before creating AR /XR experiences. Make a lasting impression, not a “saw it, cool, next” moment.

     

    I hope this basic list helps you get started or steers you in the right direction. If you’d like to learn more about Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual realities please join us at the Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles from 10/22 through 10/24. I will be discussing strategy opportunities with an amazing panel on10/23 at 11 AM. I will be joined by Raffaella Camera (Accenture), Olivier Koelemij (MediaMonks), Nigel Tierney (RYOT), Silke Meixner (IBM), and Patrick Costello (Qualcomm). We look forward to sharing what we have learned with you. If you can’t attend, request our PPT presentation which includes valuable information and analytics about the industry. It is free!

    If you can’t make the date, we’ll also be presenting at Digital Hollywood November 12, CES January 6, and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this coming February.

    I look forward to seeing you and answering your questions.

  • Is 2019 The Year for Augmented Reality to take off?

    Is 2019 The Year for Augmented Reality to take off?

    As the holiday season ends a new year full of opportunities stands before us! On the augmented reality front, I expect AR to continue to grow in the enterprise market at a steady pace. I think we are going to see the biggest changes on the consumer side. New products and services are already rolling out with regularity and I expect that the pace will increase significantly in the second half of 2019.

    But, as with any other technology, before you jump on the proverbial bandwagon it is important to think about how you’d like to use the technology. What aspect of your business will it highlight? Or how will it impact your brand, and what new avenues can it open for marketing and sales? And, if you are a product maker, you’ll want to find the right technology and production partner to bring AR magic to your products and services.

    With all that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the news and bright signs for AR in 2019:

    1. Both Apple and Google have committed significant resources to lead the market in both augmented and virtual reality

    2. 5G is finally here

    3. Magic Leap finally launched its first developer’s units.

    4. Amazon has created a new publishing platform for AR

    5. My company, NorthSouth Studios has now launched our publishing platform, universal app and games. You can now publish AR experiences and pay as you go, and it is amazingly economical! gethoodoo.com

    6. Boeing is committed to the use of AR for training,

    7. Mercedes Benz, BMW, and other car manufacturers are replacing user manuals with AR apps.

    8. Museums are now taking advantage of AR for their exhibits.

    9. Snapchat, Pokémon, L’Oréal, and other brands continue to grow and impact their revenue streams with the use of AR and MR.

    10. VR is on a convergence course with AR.

    I am going to kick off my AR activities for 2019 by moderating a panel at CES “The Augmented Reality Experience” on January 7.  I love moderating this panel because it brings together experts from different areas of AR, and provides the audience with a real 360 degree view of the AR ecosystem. Mark Francis from Amazon, Elizabeth Kiehner from IBMiX, Olivier Koelemij, Michael Leventhal from Holmes Weinberg, Catelyn Orsini from Plantronics, and Nigel Tierney from RYOT will be participating.

    Unfortunately, there is no video streaming available for these sessions, so you won’t be able to see them online.  However, I do promise to follow up with a post with the key takeaways from the session and the conference in general.

    I will be posting regularly this year with new exciting advances and information about augmented and virtual reality.