Augmented reality apps boosting smart phone uptake

It’s said the next big thing for tech-hipsters is augmented reality, and carriers stand to profit from a coming wave of these cool and groovy applications for smart phones. Augmented reality (AR) is a catch-all term for a wide range of smart phone applications that operate with image-capturing functions. “It’s about superimposing an image or experience on top of reality to enhance it,” said Mathijs Gajentaan, CEO of Winvolve, a Toronto-based new media company that’s developed promotional AR applications for Bell Canada, Second Cup and other clients. There are many definitions of AR out there, said Paul Worthington, analyst for the 6Sight Conference, an annual event for the imaging industry hosted by the Photo Marketing Association in Jackson, Mich. “It’s a fancy name for what should be happening with smart phones: you hold up your phone, and it tells you information about what you’re looking at. Smart phones have imaging, computer processing and connectivity capabilities, and AR combines those functions in new ways.” Many AR location-based services applications also combine these capabilities with the GPS and compass technology built into 3GS phones, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones, said Olivier Vincent, CEO of Canpages, a Vancouver-based local search and directories publisher. Canpages recently launched CanadaEye, a location-based application for the iPhone that lets users search and view information for the direction and distance to business locations in real-time. “It uses the camera to see what the user sees, and superimposes information from databases onto the image. Most people aren’t good at reading the 2D maps you get in traditional search. CanadaEye uses the GPS and compass to orient users, and point them in the right direction of the restaurant or other business they want to get to,” said Vincent, adding that there have been 200,000 downloads of the free CanadaEye app. The company is also looking at developing voice inputs for the application, he added. “So you could just say ‘Indian restaurant’ instead of typing it in.” Carriers should be eyeing the AR space closely, said Vincent. “Some consumers are resisting the switch from traditional cellphones to smart phones because they’re concerned about the data bills. But once they see how useful these applications are and how they make life easier, they’ll see it’s worth the extra fees. Carriers should promote these practical AR applications to show people that smart phones aren’t just for games and music,” he said. ShopSavvy, a Canpages partner and AR company based in Dallas, Tex., offers a useful shopping comparison service on Android phones, said company co-founder Alexander Muse. “When they’re in a store, users can point their cameras at the barcode on a product, and we find any local and online retailers who sell it as well, organize the information from lowest to highest price, and give directions to other stores that sell the product. We give users all the information available to ensure they’re getting a good deal,” he said. In the United States, ShopSavvy initially partnered with T-Mobile, the first carrier to offer the Android when it was launched, said Muse. “They put a kiosk in every store advertising the ShopSavvy application alongside the Android, and T-Mobile saw a 30 per cent lift in sales. Cool applications tend to drive additional sales of more expensive smart phones.” In the 21 months since it launched, ShopSavvy has acquired 5.5 million users in the US, and expects to double to 10 million by the end of 2010, said Muse. “We only have a few hundred thousand users in Canada, but Canpages is helping us grow the market, and we’ve also partnered with Rogers.” Many new and existing players are entering the AR space, said Worthington. “Layar and Euzix are two new AR companies, but Google, Microsoft, and Apple are also involved. These established companies are playing with AR in their labs but they haven’t released anything that’s ready for prime time yet.” Google is looking at novel ways to combine features, said Steven Woods, a Waterloo-based director at Google Canada. He said AR is mostly focused on sight and location-based services, which he called “the low-hanging fruit.” But Google is experimenting with how AR fits into the user experience “by extending human senses with information about the world around you,” he said. The search giant is working on Google Goggles, an AR prototype for the Android. The application uses Google’s machine translation technology and image recognition capabilities to conduct real-time translations of text found in photos of street signs, posters and other foreign text. “In the future, if a user is in a Japanese restaurant, he can take a picture of the menu and translate it into English,” said Woods. But the technology currently supports only German-to-English translation, according to the Google Goggle blog. Still, Google plans to develop the application so that it can translate the 52 languages currently supported by Google Translate. There are also opportunities for AR application development for municipalities and other sectors, said Gajentaan. “Cities can use the discovery and navigation elements of AR to guide people to historic buildings and other points of interest. And Google is experimenting with a form of object recognition in an industrial application that lets a worker take a picture of a lamp post, for example, and the smart phone links to a database that gives the specifications for it.” Worthington said it’s too early to discern trends or predict the uptake of AR. “Microsoft and Apple aren’t really saying what they’re doing, and Google has zillions of things on its lab site that never see the light of day. But AR is one of those things that’s both desirable—and inevitable.” news@thewirereport.ca

Augmented reality apps boosting smart phone uptake

Broadcast | March 26, 2010

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