With the less important footprint,
the social networking segment maybe positively impacted by AR features.
Similar numbers are mentioned by another study proposed by MarketsandMarkets,
that notes a compound annual growth rate of 95% from 2011 to 2016.
As in many other cases in the past, the AR
applications are following the same development paths.
Starting from the situation of technology push and
wow effect, to the situation of being driven by user needs.
A study from FirstPartner helps us to understand this transformation.
Therefore, the development of technologies related to image processing and sensors
created firstly three types of AR applications
with various development cost.
From the low cost, marker based AR where physical markers
like the one in the picture were placed in the physical environment,
and tracked in real time to the middle cost marker-less AR
mainly doing geolocation,
and to the high cost augmented vision type of application,
where real objects are tracked directly.
Such techniques are integrated in various applications
transforming them in AR enabled applications
and used for advertising or promotion campaigns, for games or
for other types of mobile applications, like navigation and search.
The business actors behind marker based AR experiments are agencies, game publishers
and the brand new one called the AR publishers.
They are launching trial AR titles and campaigns to measure end user interest,
creating a push-through effect from the developer community.
Geolocation AR enables what was called AR Browsers,
a specific type of smartphone application
which provides a single application framework.
It combines real-time GPS, camera and compass information to
identify surroundings and overlay selectable real-time information.
The AR Browsers business actors have multilevel strategy
to deploy such applications.
From free download in major community app stores,
to factory installed by phone vendors as part of the product feature set.
They are also actively driving developer creation of reach AR content overlays.
Finally, the augmented vision AR applications heavily rely
on the advancements in sensors, like the ones listed in the figure.
And wearable displays, being head mounted displays,
virtual retinal displays or near to eye display.
These technologies are not addressing only the visual modality, but
all senses are considered.
Sensor development focus is on driving miniaturisation and
increasing accuracy whilst achieving cost reductions.
These various kind of technologies are now more and more integrating in platforms,
being consoles, home computers, mobile smartphones and wearables.
Trying to find a route to the market by regular retail,
distributioning application stores or as B to B professional solutions.
In the same time, various business models are tested,
ranging from advertising founded to application purchase,
content driven model, subscription based or featured content.
The current and potential application domains are various and
some of them are illustrated in this picture.
Advertising, e-commerce,
gaming, computing, mobile information, military or education.
The initial AR product and campaigns have gained traction through novelty,
but momentum will need to be created through sustained end user attractiveness.
On the other end, the AR market offers the best user experience,
but requires mass market stimuli to motivate investment in developing,
high volume, low cost sensors, display and platform products.
The AR ecosystem today is very heterogeneous and
it is in a continuous transformation.
There are small actors, like 2-3 persons garage-type startups,
small and medium enterprises looking for new business opportunities,
but also well established industrial actors coming from various domains
like IT, consumer electronics, construction, aeronautics and so on.
But let's try to put some order and observe the flows of this ecosystem.
As we mentioned previously, the end users are coming from different domains.
They contract with application developers for various kinds of needs
and some of these developers are specialized in AR applications
by integrating components created by the third type of actors,
the AR technology providers.