This will be the first year of single digit year-over-year growth for the wearables market, mostly due to continuing softness among basic wearables (devices that do not run third-party applications). However, double-digit growth will return in 2019 and through the rest of the forecast as smartwatches and new form factors gain acceptance. In 2022, IDC expects total shipment volumes will reach 190.4 million units, resulting in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.6% over the five-year forecast.

“The slowdown in the worldwide wearables market is a sign that this is a market in transition instead of a market in slowdown,” said Ramon T Llamas, research director for IDC’s Wearables team. “Vendors are slowly moving beyond first-generation devices and experiences, bringing together an ecosystem of partners and applications for improved user experiences that reach beyond step counting. The wearables of tomorrow will play a more prominent role in communication, digital health care, home IoT, and enterprise productivity that will make last year’s wearables look quaint.”

The report includes forecast highlights for smart watches, wristbands and ear wear.

Virtual reality (VR) immerses you in a fictional, isolated universe. Augmented reality (AR), in contrast, overlays computer-generated information on the real world in real time. As you look at or wear a device equipped with AR software and a camera—be it a smartphone, a tablet, a headset or smart glasses—the program analyzes the incoming video stream, downloads extensive information about the scene and superposes on it relevant data, images or animations, often in 3-D.  Examples are given such as Pokémon GO and the software that helps you to park your car.

A multitude of consumer apps—including ones that translate street sign for foreign visitors, enable students to dissect virtual frogs and allow shoppers to see how a chair will look in their living room before they bring it home—also feature AR. In the future, the technology will enable museumgoers to conjure up guides resembling holograms; surgeons to visualize tissues underneath a patient’s skin in 3-D; architects and designers to collaborate on their creations in novel ways; drone operators to control their remote robots with enhanced imagery; and novices to speedily learn new tasks in areas ranging from medicine to factory maintenance.

Easy-to-use software for designing apps should expand consumer offerings in the coming years. At the moment, though, AR is having its greatest impact in industry, where it is an integral component of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” or “Industry 4.0”: the systemic transformation of manufacturing through the integration of physical and digital systems to improve quality, lower costs and increase efficiency. Many companies, for instance, are testing its use on assembly lines. AR can deliver just the right information at the very moment it is needed (such as when a worker has to select one part over another)—thereby reducing errors, enhancing efficiency and improving productivity. It can also visualize stresses in equipment and create real-time images of where problems lie.

Market analysts, such as ABI Research, IDC and Digi-Capital, believe that augmented reality is on the cusp of going mainstream. They expect the total market for AR, currently valued at about $1.5 billion, to grow to $100 billion by 2020. Major technology companies—including Apple, Google and Microsoft—are devoting large financial and human resources to both AR and VR products and applications. And venture capital is starting to roll in, with $3 billion invested in AR and VR in 2017—half of that amount in the fourth quarter alone. Harvard Business Review recently highlighted AR as a transformative technology that will affect all businesses.

Obstacles persist. At the moment, limitations of hardware and communication bandwidth pose barriers to scaling up for everyday use by consumers. For example, many existing museum and travel apps that use AR to enhance an experience have to be downloaded in advance. Even then, the quality of the graphics may not meet users’ expectations. But the field is set to grow dramatically as cheaper, faster AR-ready mobile chips become available, more versatile smart glasses come to market and bandwidth increases. Then augmented reality will join the Internet and real-time video as an unexceptional part of our everyday lives.

The announcement came in the same week as consultancy firm Capgemini released a report showing half of all large businesses not already using AR or VR expect it to be mainstream in their organisation within three years.

Capgemini Australia digital strategy and transformation director Peter Meliniotis said AR, where digital images are imposed over the real-life environment, as in Pokemon GO, had a lower barrier to entry than VR, which requires an immersive digital environment.

Mr Meliniotis said AR was being used in safety goggles in mining while those inspecting utility boxes on the street were turning to glasses that overlay instructions over the box, rather than workers picking up a paper manual.

He said VR so far was lending itself to training situations especially where workers face the threat of death or serious injury.

One such example is Australian-designed FLAIM Trainer that puts firefighters in virtual fires.

“It’s really interesting that enterprises are actually embracing AR and VR ahead of consumers,” Mr Meliniotis told AAP.

“Having augmented reality safety goggles is a really easy step for a miner to take whereas getting consumers to wear glasses every single day to provide them with an AR experience is a lot more onerous.”

Two big challenges remain.

Especially in mines in remote locations, a competent telecommunications network is a must, as is access to the people who can build such technology.

RMIT Online chief executive Helen Souness said students tackling the university’s new short course will be mentored by experts from Amazon, Versent and Eliiza.

“These courses are delivering a community-driven, industry mentored experience that not only teach up-to-the-minute skills but also connects students to future work opportunities in cutting-edge industries,” she told AAP in a statement.

Amazon Web Services’ Brad Coughlan said AR and VR represent some of the hottest areas in technology and the new courses would address the skill gap.

The consultancy thinks that half of all businesses not already using AR and VR tech will start using it as they accept that it can enhance productivity, efficiency and safety in the workplace.

The most popular uses of AR and VR in businesses will be to offer remote real-time support to customers and to train staff.

“Immersive technology has come a long way in a short time and will continue to evolve. Faced with stiff competition from aggressive investors in the US and China, businesses need to streamline investment to seize the long-term growth potential this technology offers,” Lanny Cohen, chief innovation officer at Capgemini said.

“To drive the highest business value from AR and VR, companies need a centralized governance structure, proofs of concept that are aligned with business strategy, and to be able to drive innovation and employee change management.”

Capgemini’s report looked into the attitudes towards AR and VR too and two-thirds suggested AR is more relevant to their business compared to VR, which correlates with current usage stats – 46% of businesses have employed AR, while only 38% are using VR.

The report noted that 82% of businesses already using AR and VR tech said it’s either exceeding or meeting their expectations, but are experiencing problems when it comes to developing their existing implementations because there’s a shortage of skilled people to help them grow.

Joshi writes: “The logistics industry can be considered as the lifeline of global business activities, as it is responsible for the smooth and efficient flow of goods down the supply chain, from the primary producer to the ultimate consumer.

Innovations in engineering are improving the mechanical aspects of the industry by making logistical operations faster, smarter, and more efficient. To complement this progress, the use of AR in logistics will improve the human aspect of the business to further improve the operational performance and meet the ever-evolving customer expectations.

Two sections are discussed and AR’s application and role in both: Transportation and Storage.

AR in Logistics: Transportation

The primary challenge for logistics companies, regardless of size and segment, is concerning transportation efficiency. Developments in the automobile industry are resulting in the emergence of vehicles that provide better performance and improved on-board diagnostics. Making the most of these machines can only be possible by enabling their operators, i.e., the drivers to function more efficiently.

The most obvious application in this area is the use of heads-up displays for vehicle operators, to make navigation and performance data visible on the go. By using AR-powered displays on windshields or equipping drivers with smart glasses, drivers can navigate better and monitor vehicle performance to make timely maintenance decisions.

Furthermore, AR can also help drivers to deal with unexpected breakdowns by providing virtual assistance through a smartphone camera. A recent example of such an application is the “Vehicle Lens” app by Mercedes that enables heavy vehicle owners to get an AR view of the performance and maintenance information by positioning their smartphone cameras in different angles.

AR in Logistics: Storage

The storage and sorting facilities are as important for logistics organizations as the vehicles. Warehouses give logistics providers a place to pack, sort, and temporarily store goods while waiting for transit. Warehouse employees traditionally have had to use printed or written labels, and recently RFID readers to identify and sort packages.

This process can be replaced with the use of smart glasses, which can be used to visually identify packages in a hands-free, convenient, and efficient manner. According to a recent report, projected logistics to globally account for 24% of smart glass shipments in 2017.

Global logistics leader DHL is among the first companies to test and standardize the use of smart glasses in the industry. The use of these glasses has been reported to make the process of manual sorting much easier and quicker, contributing to an increase in overall productivity.

It is evident that augmented reality will have a role to play in the future of logistics. The aforementioned applications are just a few of the numerous applications AR can have in the logistics sector.

In addition to adopting AR, logistics companies should also incorporate other technologies within it. For instance, the impact of IoT on VR can be immense and can make the processes smarter and more profitable.

The author makes the link between recent developments in AR, uses in the workplace and its significant role in mobile app development.

The author argues that even in cases where AR is not yet that popular, with time it will have a stronghold in business enterprises and institutes too. AR has a vital role to play in mobile applications also. Hence it is a matter of time when it will capture the app market.

See – The original article on Customer Think.

See – The AREA’s use cases for training.

AR has garnered a great deal of interest over the past few years for its clear applicability in industrial maintenance and repair applications as well as operator training. The question is, how quickly is industry adapting to and adopting this technology.

Though it does not provide a broad analysis in terms of overall industry adoption of augmented reality (AR) technologies, a mid-year update from PTC on its “State of Industrial Augmented Reality” report does provide good insights into current applications of AR among PTC’s Vuforia and Vuforia Studio customers.

According to the report, the majority of PTC customers piloting and adopting AR for internal use noted improvements in “operational efficiency” and “lower costs” as the main drivers of their interest in AR. At the same time, 50 percent of respondents noted “differentiated product or service offerings” and “improvement in sales and marketing” as key business goals they looked to address with AR initiatives.

This finding in the PTC research seems to indicate a confluence of purpose for AR in both internal and external (customer-facing) applications. As stated in the report: “Driven by the same high downtime costs forcing companies to develop AR maintenance experiences internally, customers of industrial enterprises are open to receiving value-add services that utilize AR to reduce downtime and streamline their service experience. The path to value that PTC observes is that pilots start with internal proof of concept and quickly become deployed across multiple areas, including customer-facing product and service initiatives.”

Given that a good bit of attention has already been paid to AR use for internal maintenance / operation applications, I found it interesting to learn how widely customer-facing applications of AR are already being applied.

According to the PTC report, 26 percent of respondents developing customer-facing applications said those applications are service related, i.e., providing instructions to the customer to pre-empt and reduce service calls or equipping service teams with service inspection apps to increase first-time fix rate. These respondents note that the ultimate goal of service-related AR is to “maximize the value customers receive from their products.”

Another 20 percent of respondents use customer-facing AR to “extend a customer’s ‘operator’ experience with the product via operator and assembly instructions to guide customers through product setup and operation to ensure safe and compliant product use.

Surprisingly, the PTC report notes that companies using AR for customer-facing applications report “having completed successful use case development at nearly three times the rate of those developing internal use cases (29 percent versus 11 percent).” PTC thinks a reason for this disparity could be that companies developing for internal use may be “experimenting more with AR technology to find the best fit for optimizing their internal operations. They may also be taking on more ambitious projects, such as integrating enterprise systems or building use cases that span multiple functions in the value chain.”

Regardless of whether the company is pursuing internal or external use of AR, PTC says its research shows that the majority of enterprises pursuing “any flavor of augmented reality are standing up projects and experiencing ROI within 12 months.”

With such a high-focus on customer-facing AR applications among its AR users, PTC spotlighted a few case study examples of companies deploying the technology for this purpose in its report. In one example highlighting the internal use of AR to help customers address product problems, Trox do Brasil, a manufacturer of central air conditioning components, is enabling augmented service manuals and instructions, service inspection, and remote expertise to ensure they can instruct and guide customers through repairs and maintenance hurdles. “These new service capabilities will reduce the need for on-site service trips in addition to reducing the customers’ downtime and improving their overall experience and value from Trox do Brasil’s products,” states the PTC report.

A more direct customer-facing example of AR application is being used by Cannondale, a global supplier of cycling equipment. The company offers a bike called Lefty Ocho, which ships with AR companion experiences that include operator and assembly instructions. In its report, PTC says this functionality helps customers learn about “the features of their new bike, mechanics, and proper use to ensure the safest and best product experience possible. It also provides a key voice-of-the product feedback loop for Cannondale to incorporate into product development in addition to reducing basic customer service calls and questions.”

The research company uses insights from more than 2,000 technologies and condenses them into a succinct set of 35 emerging technology trends on a “hype cycle”.

Gartner Hype Cycle 2018 predicts rise of mixed reality

One of the key findings is that mixed reality (MR) is forecast to overtake virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as the preferred technology.

Also known as hybrid reality, MR is the blending of AR and VR, providing users with the ability to switch between fully immersive virtual content and augmented digital content overlaid on the real world.

According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, standalone AR will reach the trough of disillusionment, which means that interest in the technology will decrease, in five to ten years. However, MR will remain popular for longer because it better integrates real-world objects and their virtual counterparts.

The hype cycle therefore reveals that MR will become a widely used human-machine interface technology in the coming years.

Head of VR/AR at PwC Jeremy Dalton believes that the spread of devices that incorporate AR is partly responsible for this:

“Augmented Reality is fast becoming a default part of the devices in our pockets. Google and Apple own the majority of the smartphone market and are both investing heavily in AR, helping this technology reach the mainstream more quickly and explaining its more advanced position on the latest Hype Cycle.

“The business case for developing further AR applications continues to grow as the technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous. It’s a virtuous circle – launching more AR apps means people become more comfortable using this kind of technology, and in turn this continues to drive up adoption.”

More can be read in the full article online here.

“Services are a powerful economic driver,” UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Isabelle Durant said during a keynote speech to open the fair “They made up 56% of developing countries’ total GDP in 2016, and 54% of their total employment in 2017.”

UNCTAD Creative Economy Programme Chief Marisa Henderson was also a keynote speaker at the creative economy forum. She was joined by UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Programme team which participated in several side meetings and events to highlight the growing role of the creative economy for economic development.

The forum was held on 29 May and was jointly hosted by the World Tradepoint Federation and the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce with the participation of UNCTAD.

It tackled the theme of how technological innovation promotes the development of creative economy. Participants looked at how augmented reality, technology and the creative industries are combining to form a new engine for economic growth.

Ms. Henderson spoke about the creative economy in the digital era.

“In terms of development, digital creation, distribution and participation have revolutionized the creative and many other industries and are driving new economic and trade models forward,” she said.

“Creative workers and creative content are already integral to bringing the digital world to life – and it is critical that we understand both this contribution and how it promotes socio-economic development.”

The full article can be read on the UN conference for trade and development website.

Augmented reality, which sees digital elements blend with the real world, was worth $4.21bn in 2017.  The forecast means the AR market will grow at a compound interest growth rate of 40.29%.

Various sectors have been exploring ways to use the technology. In healthcare, surgeons at St Mary’s Hospital, London, have been using Microsoft HoloLens to provide visual assistance during surgery.

Interest from emergency services has also been high, with plans to use an AR overlay in the US to track the position of firefighters in a burning building.  Jeremy Dalton, head of VR/AR at PwC, said: “Once Augmented Reality becomes a default part of the devices in everyone’s pocket it will enhance the business case for developing further AR applications and help build greater comfort with its use in society, both of which will help drive adoption.”

See the original article for more information.