Marketing via Augmented Reality

Do such focused AR experiences for purchase work?    Has been driving some interest.

Patrón mixes e-commerce and AR    by Jonathan Gross

When Apple opened up ARKit to developers with the launch of iOS 11 in September, Patrón Tequila was one of the first brands to debut its own augmented reality app created with the technology. Now, Patrón has added the option to purchase to the experience. As of Dec. 14, users can order bottles of Patrón through The Patrón Experience AR app.

Originally, the purpose of the app was to intrigue users by educating them on the history and process of how Patrón makes tequila, not to be a sales channel. In the app, a virtual bartender at the company’s distillery in Mexico gives the history of the brand. But with more than 50,000 views and downloads, Patrón sees the app as a viable way to sell tequila, according to Adrian Parker, vp of marketing at Patrón.  .... " 

Emergence of Practical Augmented Reality (AR)

I am a long time experimenter with the concept of AR in Business.  We experimented with very early (1980s) applications with specialized hardware.  For things like manufacturing line maintenance. Packaging analysis.   Applications were too cumbersome and narrow to be successful.  There was also a flurry of AR apps without extraordinary hardware assistance, also not very impressive for practical enterprise applications.

Now we are starting to see AR being embedded in real phones, with the potential for value beyond gaming. Below a list of ARKit enabled apps for the iPhone in IOS 11.  Beyond games.  Will be taking a look.

iOS 11 ARKit apps are appearing at the App Store
By Jonny Evans, Computerworld

Now that Apple has put reality distortion inside every iPhone, we’ll get to explore new realities with apps like these.   While Face ID may be capturing headlines, its Apple’s ARKit that will make a much bigger difference to iPhone user’s lives.

AR-ready apps set to launch

The company directed attention at gaming during its recent iPhone X launch, but entertainment apps are not all you should expect as the first ARKit-enabled apps appear.

Here are some of the first wave of AR-ready apps to be made available at the App Store around the launch of iOS 11. More are appearing rapidly at time of writing.  ... " 

Augmented Reality Challenge

A look at Hololens vs ARKit

Is Augmented Reality going to be Microsoft’s next smartphone moment?
HoloLens was inspirational, but it’s ARKit and ARCore that are going to win developers.  By Peter Bright in ARsTechnica

Apple and Augmented Reality

We have seen AR demonstrated on the phone for a long time, but it has not broken through to real value or common use.   Is that about to change?

Apple Bets the Future of Augmented Reality will be on your Phone
THE AR REVOLUTION will come not with a bang, but a tape measure. At least, that seems to be the lesson so far from ARKit, Apple’s new augmented-reality platform.

ARKit lets developers build AR apps—which integrate digital experiences into the physical world via iPhone or iPad, a la Pokemon Go. Those apps will be available to consumers when iOS 11 arrives in September. But developers have started tinkering—creating tools that let you see how furniture fits in a room, or quickly calculate the area of your kitchen. Compared to the likes of Magic Leap or Google Glass, these apps are simple, almost trivial. But that smallness might be precisely what makes them so potentially huge.

Matthew Miesnieks, a VC who led AR research and development efforts at Samsung, calls ARKit “the biggest thing that’s happened to the AR industry since it began,” and he’s not alone in his enthusiasm. By getting AR in the hands of millions of iPhone users, Apple is poised to become the world’s most powerful and popular purveyor of augmented-reality apps. And by opening up its developers’ kit, it’s powering hundreds of experiments into what, precisely, this medium is good for. ....  "

Google's Second Tango Phone

Have been waiting for this.  Seen demos.   Had seen this as a possibility for detecting, mapping and understanding interior spaces and fixtures, like shelves.   The second phone implementing their vaunted Tango project that maps interior spaces.  Perhaps in response to rumored upcoming Apple AR phone systems?  The Tango idea gets a negative review below,  too much hardware, while the Apple ARKit has no additional hardware.  Following.

Google’s second AR phone, the Asus ZenFone AR, is finally official
Google's augmented reality phones take forever to release, for whatever reason.
By Ron Amadeo  ...   "

See Project Tango.

Wal-Mart right about AR being a Sure Thing?

In RetailWire. With an interesting, ongoing discussion.  Do we have ubiquity of AR coming? Replacing smartphones in five years?

Is Walmart’s innovation leader right that the AR revolution is a sure thing?   by Matthew Stern

Pokémon Go may have come and gone, but big names in the retail world are making serious investments in the future of augmented reality (AR) and believe that mass adoption of the technology is soon forthcoming. That was the main takeaway from a session last week at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago given by Imran Ansani, principal manager of innovation at Walmart Labs.

“Earlier this week Apple had their worldwide developer’s conference,” Mr. Ansani said. “The big revelation was not some new iPad or a Mac Book Pro or anything fancy like that. It was [an augmented reality developer’s kit] called the ARKit. That kind of gives you an understanding of how important augmented reality is to some of these bigger players, and what we can start expecting to see in the future.”

Despite the current lack of a “killer app” or point of critical mass, Mr. Ansani sees AR as reaching ubiquity in the next five years. In fact, he believes the smartphone will become obsolete in favor of AR-enabled devices that allow people to interact with computers in a “more natural” way.  ... " 

See recent article on ubiquity of AR.