The Selling Power of Augmented Reality
These days, you don’t really need to guess what that new leather couch would look like in your living room. Thanks to augmented reality (AR) applications that can be quickly downloaded to your mobile device, all you need to do is point a phone or tablet at a printed catalog to make a virtual item appear.
IKEA’s AR app is great for determining if a new chair would match the rest of your furniture or if it would actually fit in a particular corner of a room. And ice-cream company Häagen-Dazs has its own iPhone app that generates a virtual violin concerto on top of your pint of Rocky Road for two minutes—the time it takes for ice cream to reach the ideal consistency. But what makes this implementation of AR so revolutionary? How do any of these free apps significantly benefit the companies developing them?
The answer comes from recent figures by Juniper Research, a company that focuses on mobile data. The numbers state that AR paid app downloads, subscriptions, and advertising will lead to global revenues of $1.5 billion by 2015, along with 2.5 billion downloads. In 2010, the revenue peaked at less than $2 million.
That’s a significant jump, and as you can imagine, it has different tech companies and assorted retailers interested. IBM, Converse, and Sharp all have their own unique campaigns that use this technology to sell products, and new entrants in this augmented race seemingly appear by the hour.
Applications are only getting more sophisticated, too. Sharp is trying to drum up greater interest in its TVs by launching a free AR application that lets potential Sharp TV buyers compare and contrast the look and feel of LED TVs between fifty and ninety inches on their own walls. You can now see exactly how and where the product will fit, and if you find the right match, you can even buy the TV without exiting the app.
Beyond AR’s practicality, it’s difficult to deny that it’s just plain cool. Seeing virtual objects and graphics appear in your home is still novel enough to grab just about anyone’s attention—even if this concept has been around for years. With Google Glass and other wearables growing in prominence, it’s easy to see a scenario where witnessing this technology might become even easier—and, dare I say, even cooler.
There’s money to be made here, so companies will continue to experiment with AR. Thankfully, applications coming from IKEA, Sharp, and a handful of other innovative groups are making life easier through AR. It’s still a novelty, but one with ever-increasing value.
