Adding another arrow to its quiver of augmented reality acquisitions, Apple has reportedly acquired Spektral, a computer vision company with technology for real-time compositing (otherwise know as the "green screen" technique in broadcast TV and film).
This week, we continued our NR30 series highlighting the leaders of augmented reality space by profiling the venture capitalists and strategic corporate investors that sustain the industry.
Leading augmented reality headset makers Microsoft and Magic Leap are among the companies now vying for a military contract for battlefield heads-up displays.
Cited by many listed on this year's NR30 list as the most important event in the last 12 months, last year's release of ARKit catapulted Apple CEO Tim Cook to the top of Next Reality's rankings. This week, we dug deeper by explaining why he's at the top of the list of NR30 Mobile AR leaders.
This time last year, we got our first taste of what mobile app developers could do in augmented reality with Apple's ARKit. Most people had never heard of Animojis. Google's AR platform was still Tango. Snapchat introduced its World Lens AR experiences. Most mobile AR experiences existing in the wild were marker-based offerings from the likes of Blippar and Zappar or generic Pokémon GO knock-offs.
For the augmented reality hardware industry to progress towards the consumer segment, display technology needs to get better. Investors recognize that, and they are showing AR display makers the money.
While Magic Leap has gained attention for its ability to raise capital, the company (now with an actual product on the market) still faces an uphill climb against the titans of the industry.
A peek inside the code of the Snapchat app has revealed that the company is expanding the search capabilities of its augmented reality camera to include visual search that may link to items within Amazon's massive online store.
We've shown you the best augmented reality headsets, and now it's time to show you the rest. These are the AR headsets you've probably never heard of or even seen. The AR headsets that, in some cases, have a shot at the big time, and may one day reach widespread adoption, and, in other cases, are unwieldily contraptions that look like something out of a weird science fiction movie.
On Thursday, at the Augmented World Expo, Stockholm, Sweden-based eye tracking company Tobii announced that the augmented reality display company Lumus will integrate its eye tracking technology into the Lumus DK50 AR development kit.
Waveguide manufacturer DigiLens has closed a $25 million Series C round of funding from automotive technology company Continental, which uses the technology in its heads up displays.
China-based virtual reality headset maker ANTVR has decided to enter the augmented reality space, and to do so it's launching its headset on Kickstarter. The company claims that its new Mix AR device has a field of view that surpasses the Meta 2, the HoloLens, and others within a smaller form factor and at a fraction of the price. But there's a catch.
Kitten Planet, a spin-off company that grew up in Samsung's C-Lab incubator, has developed a connected toothbrush that teaches and motivates children to brush their teeth better via augmented reality while tracking their performance.
Another AR cloud savior has emerged this week in Fantasmo, a startup that wants to turn anyone with a smartphone into a cartographer for spatial maps.
This week, we're beginning to see the wide ranging impacts of some of the early iterations of augmented reality hardware and software.
During Snap Inc.'s quarterly earnings report, released on Tuesday, the company disclosed that it snagged a revenue total of $230.8 million for the first quarter of 2018, an increase of 54% compared to last year, largely fueled by its augmented reality offerings and other advertising products.
With all the recent activity around augmented reality, the possibilities involving immersive computing and commerce are quickly becoming obvious, and digital payments giant PayPal has no plans to sit on the sidelines
As if its users weren't already having enough fun with dancing hot dogs and face effects, Snapchat is upping the ante with a new kind of shared augmented reality content.
Magic Leap loves to stoke mystery around its still unreleased product, the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition, and now we've found yet another piece of the puzzle in the form of an Easter egg on the company's website.
Taking photos that are actually printed and hung on a real wall, versus being shot and shared via a social wall, is a seemingly lost art, but PhotoBloom AR wants to change that with augmented reality.
Snapchat has released three new augmented reality Lenses that boast uber-accurate face tracking courtesy of the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X and ARKit.
The legal travails of Magic Leap appear to have no end in sight, as a lawsuit filed by an ex-employee further threatens to dampen the startup's 2018 launch.
Getting an insider view of the goings-on at Magic Leap is hard to come by, but occasionally, the company lets one of its leaders offer a peek at what's happening at the famously secretive augmented reality startup. One of those opportunities came up a few days ago when Magic Leap's chief futurist and science fiction novelist, Neal Stephenson, sat for an extended interview at the MIT Media Lab.
Just a week after rumors surfaced of a massive new investment in Magic Leap led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the investment has been confirmed by the company's CEO Rony Abovitz.
While everyone was marveling at the latest drama over at Magic Leap involving employees last week, a major rumor listed in one of the reports, related to the company's flagship device, was mostly overlooked.
It turns out that coming up groundbreaking technology and raising billions may actually be the easy part for Magic Leap, as a new report has revealed yet another legal entanglement at the Florida-based company.
As far as overall security updates are concerned, we all know that iOS reigns supreme over Android. But just how bad do Android devices fare against Apple in general? A recent report will have you second guessing some companies the next time you're in the market for a handset.
As the Notorious B.I.G. once said, via his hit single, "Mo Money, Mo Problems." However, it would appear that Magic Leap feels a bit differently about piling on the cash.
In any business, there are a number of questions companies must answer in order to get customers to buy a product or service. The same holds true for companies selling augmented reality headsets.
While the consensus among some in the augmented reality community is that the Microsoft HoloLens is the best device available at present, it also remains the most cost-prohibitive option, with the development edition costing $3,000.
Investors aren't keen to throw money at a new technology sector without at least some hope of a significant return on their investment in the future. That's why a recent run of activity within the augmented reality business space has stoked some new optimism among the financial community.
It used to be that the best kind of swag was T-shirts and hats from your favorite music artists, but now the symbol of casual insider cool falls to the tech companies, and Snapchat has just joined the ranks of branded apparel purveyors.
Facebook just ratcheted up its ongoing augmented reality war against the competition by stealing away Google's director of product for AR, Nikhil Chandhok. In his new role, the executive will serve as Facebook's director of product on the company's Camera/AR team.
Coming into this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the common sentiment among observers was that this was expected to be the big year for augmented reality.
Digital imaging company OmniVision Technologies and the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited (ASTRI) entered the CES fray this week with a new reference design for an augmented reality headset capable of 60 degrees field of view (FoV).
On Tuesday, original design manufacturer (ODM) Flex used the CES spotlight to help introduce a smartglasses reference design aimed at companies interested in bringing their own enterprise AR headsets to market.
Who said brushing your teeth can't be fun? It certainly isn't Kolibree, a company that's introducing the world to the first augmented reality toothbrush for kids at this week's CES tech conference in Las Vegas.
To commemorate the rollout of the AR+ update for Pokémon Go, Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter to promote and celebrate the moment his company's ARKit platform made possible.
Augmented reality has given companies worldwide great powers for innovating business practices and engaging customers, but on Monday, Honda demonstrated that with great power, also comes great social responsibility.
Just as the modern travel experience has improved thanks to the internet, Airbnb wants to make your stay in a stranger's home easier by way of augmented and virtual reality.
