While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
Last year at CES, RealMax blew away the AR headset competition with a prototype AR headset surpassing 100 degrees field of view.
All of the the tech industry giants, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, are working on new smartglasses and/or AR headsets, but this week, Google took a major step forward with gesture recognition technology that could make its way into AR wearables, posing a threat to Leap Motion and its hand-tracking controllers.
The augmented reality industry has a bright future built on innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean we can't look back at the close of the year to see what the industry has accomplished from a business perspective.
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
After a $20 million funding round fell through, augmented reality headset maker Meta Company has been forced to furlough (or place on temporary leave of absence) approximately 65% of its workforce for 30 days.
If you're not impressed with the current crop of AR content, and you're worried this may put a damper on the industry's growth, these stories should give you cause for some optimism.
On Tuesday, Unity released the latest version of its 3D engine, which brings improvements to the Scriptable Render Pipeline that the company introduced earlier this year.
The Augmented World Expo is winding down in Santa Clara, where Qualcomm, Vuzix, and Meta Company were among the companies making big announcements.
While it may seem to some like investors are just throwing their money at augmented reality companies simply because the tech is heavily hyped, these money managers do actually want to see a return on their investments.
During its third-quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that "AR is going to change everything."
When it comes to augmented reality smartglasses, for now, it's still a mostly enterprise world, since the form and function of most are more acceptable on a job site versus your local cafe, and the still high price tags are far more palatable to major companies rather than individuals.
When a firm like Techstars believes that augmented reality is an attractive industry to invest in, there's a high probability that it's right.
A partnership between augmented reality company Zappar and IoT services provider EVRYTHNG will bring AR experiences to consumers while supplying market data to brands.
If competition in the augmented reality space was a spectator sport, then ARKit, ARCore, and HoloLens dominate the prime-time broadcasts on ESPN.
This week, two companies looking to capitalize on the growing augmented reality industry, raised funding from starkly different sources.
Thanks to a $100 million deal, you could be seeing more original shows on your Snapchat soon. Already, Snap has been producing super short shows in order to compete with social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook who have also been attempting to create their own content. While musical.ly has so far had the biggest success in this area, this deal with Time Warner is certainly promising for the beleaguered platform.
A report by PwC highlights that immersive experiences in augmented and virtual reality represent the fastest growing segment of the entertainment and media industry over the next six years. News from two companies working in the industry, Fox and NetDragon, underscore the growth forecast.
This week's Market Reality covers a variety of business news from acquisitions and partnerships to competitive and technology assessments to quarterly financial results.
Every Friday, Next Reality reviews the latest headlines from the financial side of augmented and mixed reality. This weekly Market Reality column covers funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions, market analysis, and the like. This week's column starts with a stock price that's performing well for one company — one that HoloLens developers should know quite well.
Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, has just announced its own autonomous car platform which is intended to speed up the development of driverless vehicles.
At Adobe Summit 2017 this week, Adobe announced they are looking to occupy a new space in the market by combining their analytic capabilities with augmented reality. Teaming up with Microsoft, the company has combined Adobe Sensei software with the HoloLens, reports GeekWire. Together, the tech and software create a new tool for retailers to track their consumers' habits.
Unwanted advertising is everywhere. Annoying pop-up ads, overly loud late night commercials, spam...it never ends. And before spam, there was junk mail. Junk mail is even worse because unlike TV commercials and internet ads, it's physical. You can't just delete or ignore it—and it's an awful waste of paper. So what can you do about it?
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
Investment in augmented reality remained robust in 2019. For the third consecutive year, we looked back on the biggest funding deals in the AR industry this week, and a familiar name came out on top.
It's the holiday season, and the tech industry is giving consumers several AR products and apps as gift-giving options.
While the long-awaited HoloLens 2 officially arrived this week, details leaked about another, arguably longer-awaited AR headset, the fabled wearable from Apple, and a previously undisclosed partner assisting the Cupertino-based company with the hardware.
Suddenly, Magic Leap's lawsuit against Nreal, as well as its barrier to entry in the Chinese market, appears to be as insurmountable as The Great Wall itself.
This time last year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and his company were faced with an erosion of its user base that cratered its stock price. This year, on the strength of Snapchat's AR camera effects, the company has reversed course. And that's why Spiegel tops the NR30, our annual list of the leaders in the AR industry.
After building a tech empire on revenues from search advertising, Google is not about to sit back and let Snapchat, Facebook, 8th Wall, and others draw all the AR marketing attention to their platforms.
While Jack Daniel's is one of the most iconic brands in the liquor business, when it comes to augmented reality marketing, it's joining a long list of others telling a very familiar story in the growing marketing medium.
We already know that Microsoft has something big planned for later this month, and now we have details on how to watch the company's big reveal.
Augmented reality and computer vision company Blippar has a new lease on life, as previous investor Candy Ventures has completed a successful bid to acquire the assets of the beleaguered company.
Despite its status as a hot commodity amongst emerging technologies, the augmented reality industry is not immune to the ebbs and flows that occur in every industry.
Augmented reality optics maker WaveOptics has just infused its operations with a fresh round of funding to facilitate its objective of bringing consumer-grade smartglasses at a $600 price point to market in 2019.
This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about.
Do you see a red door and wonder if it might be a good idea to paint it black? You could "ask Ask Sherwin-Williams," or, better yet, you could just ask the new augmented reality features in the retailer's mobile app.
This week, two companies preparing the most anticipated augmented reality devices for consumers were the subject of reports regarding strategic moves to put them in better positions to move those products forward.
When it comes to marketing, sexy sells, a point that has been lost on most augmented reality hardware makers focused mostly on the geek space. But a new promotional spot from AR-in-the-car accessory maker WayRay indicates that AR companies are beginning to see the virtual sizzle reel light.
Between Renault Truck's testing of the HoloLens in factories and BMW promoting its newest model through Snapchat, the auto industry is hot for augmented reality to improve internal operations and engage consumers.
