Apple Plants Their Seed in the Augmented Reality Orchard

Apple Plants Their Seed in the Augmented Reality Orchard

By Justin Schaefer

Yesterday (June 5, 2017), Apple introduced its developer tools for augmented reality (AR) applications, called ARKit. This puts them in direct competition with other giants such as Google and Facebook for the fate of the upcoming AR boom.

Why is this so important? Who cares who releases tools for building programs? Well, the answer is as close as that dusty cardboard box of Betamax movies in your basement. The format in which products are developed often comes with proprietary hardware technology that is needed to run the applications. You can’t use a Betamax cassette in your VHS player, and you won’t be able to run Apple AR code on an IBM processor. You can see how high the stakes are for an industry that is expected to generate up to $60 billion in global sales from over a billion users as soon as 2021 (Digi-Capital).

Investors Choose Apple

The fate of the AR market is still very much up in the air. Without a spectrum of products from which to choose, consumers have not had the opportunity to make one of them the preferred platform yet. The competition at this point is in the hands of the developers making the products. However, Apple’s release of the ARKit tools this week puts them squarely in the lead due to the inherent advantage of their massive developer fanbase estimated to be in the 100’s of millions. When compared to the potential development population of Google’s Tango platform, it is easy to see why investors are hedging toward Apple in this race. (Loup Ventures)

Google’s Innovation vs. Apple’s Success

Not to be discounted, though, is Facebook’s uncanny ability to successfully transfer users from one application to another, and Google’s ability to maximize innovation in the secondary market share left from Apple’s success. Even Microsoft and Alibaba are investing heavily in AR products such as glasses and navigation systems. While AR is bound to be immense in its impact, it still remains to be seen whether different companies can create niches for themselves in the product ecosystem.


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