Atheer: Predictions for AR in 2019
AREA member Atheer has produced a two part blog series covering their predictions for AR in 2019. The first part of the 2 part blog looks at predictions from 2018 to see how they held up, before going on to look at AR technology predictions for 2019. The original part article can be read in full here.
Those predictions in 2018 were the following:
- Lower prices for AR hardware
- Insights from data will be vital
- AI and machine learning make AR better
- Hardware becomes more powerful
- Form factors will evolve
Part 2 – predictions for 2019
Full original article with 2019 predictions can be read here. Part two of the two part series covers 5 new predictions on Augmented Reality in the coming year. Atheer also checks in with what analysts in the technology community are predicting as well.
- There will be more change on the hardware front
- Mobile first but not mobile only
- Enterprise AR customers will go public
- Data from AR projects will become even more important
- AR in government
The concluding part of the article includes research from Garter, ABI Research and The IDC.
From an AREA viewpoint, we are hugely interested in prediction 3, enterprise AR customers will go public. Here are Atheer’s thoughts on the topic:
“This one is interesting. Over the last year, we have seen how many traditional industrial enterprise customers have wanted to stay in “stealth mode” about their work in piloting and experimenting with augmented reality solutions. The result has been that you see relatively few stories about named companies using AR to change the way they work.
The reasons these companies typically didn’t want to go public about their AR work was simple: they wanted to make sure that it worked and get internal buy-in before declaring to the world that they were committed to AR. In many cases, they also wanted to ensure that they didn’t give a heads-up to their competitors about the pioneering work they were doing.
We predict that in 2019, that will be flipped on its head. Companies will go from being shy about talking publicly about their AR work to wanting to shout it from the rooftops as their customers and investors become more and more aware of how AR has the potential to make a big difference in their business.
They will do so because those same customers and investors will demand it. Customers will want to know why they can’t benefit from the use of AR to meet their needs and investors will want to know why the company they are investing in doesn’t seem to have the same kind of commitment as the company’s competitors. And executives in the “C-suite” will also begin asking their teams “what are we doing in AR and when will it be ready to use”.