With this latest round of Series-D funding, Magic Leap now has over $2.3 billion available to develop its smartglasses that it has been working on for quite some time. These smartglasses have been shown in public, but only by Shaquille O’Neal, who has invested in the company in the past.

According to reports, Magic Leap is spending around $50 million per month right now, so the company definitely needed to raise some funds. Over at Magic Leap, there are a few allegations of employees funning contracts to those that they have personal relationships with. Which means that Magic Leap is spending a lot more money then it actually needs to be spending, which is also why it is burning through money pretty quickly. Definitely not a good look when you are a startup, and haven’t even produced a single product yet. Currently, Magic Leap has around 1400 employees, and also have offices in Florida (where it is based), as well as in Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, Seattle, Austin, Dallas, Zurich, New Zealand and Israel.

While Magic Leap is working on smartglasses right now, that’s not the only thing the company is looking to build. It is also looking to build the “full stack”. That means it wants to build the software and content that would run on these glasses. So far, these glasses look pretty similar to a regular pair of glasses, and a bit more standard than what Google put out with Project Glass a few years ago. That will likely help it get adopted a bit more, especially in a world where many are afraid of being recorded everywhere they go. But smartglasses are a virtually untapped market, and can be useful for a number of things.

As Augmented Reality (AR) continues to create a beachhead in enterprise and shows promise for consumer AR in the coming years, attention is being paid not only to the potential applications for AR, but also to what impact hardware components will have in the market. According to ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies, the augmented reality hardware market is ripe for innovation and transformation especially in the diverging capability demands for displays coming from divergent consumer and enterprise requirements

“The past few years have allowed augmented reality to take root in the enterprise with compelling and unique use cases, including remote expertise and hands-free instruction,” says Eric Abbruzzese, Principal Analyst for ABI Research. “As the market matures, there will be a need for greater capability in these AR devices, with displays powering much of the change. Given the growing consumer market interest, the similarities and differences between display types in AR will be increasingly important.”

At a basic level, augmented reality is a digital overlay of content. To accomplish this in a head-worn form factor, transparent display technologies are best, but to achieve transparency while maintaining high resolution and brightness along with low cost and usable form factor can be a challenge. Companies like Kopin and Lumus are working to maintain a balance between these factors. Other players are looking to jump the transformative curve with new technologies, such as Avegant and Magic Leap with their light field product prototypes. Micro displays combined with a transparent waveguide are most common today, with projection-based displays also in use.

According to ABI Research, there will be 32.7 million total smart glasses shipments in 2022, growing from 225 thousand in 2017. During this timeframe, binocular (two display) devices will overtake monocular (single display) devices in market share. While monocular devices are predominant today thanks to their availability, cost, and acceptable performance, binocular devices will eventually win out as ASPs decline and device capability is fully realized. The consumer market will play a significant role in this shift as well.

“As the AR demand grows in enterprise and begins in the consumer market, the requirements for smart glasses shift,” continues Abbruzzese. “Generally, an increased desire for higher-performing devices will push the market toward better displays in every category, with some use cases targeting specific needs. Consumer fitness devices will require small form factors and high brightness suitable for outdoor usage. AR media and entertainment growth with necessitate binocular, 3D capable devices with high resolution. Devices used in environments with high safety requirements will favor safety certified devices with highly transparent displays. Across the board, as knowledge and comfort with the potential of AR grow, so does the expectation for the devices, and with that expectation the requirements for devices grow too.”

This latest financing builds on the momentum of the past 12 months for Upskill, where the company grew its multinational client base by more than 300 percent. In addition, last year Upskill introduced a new release of its flagship Skylight AR platform which added self-service AR workflow creation and data integration features, expanded its ease of use and interoperability with enterprise IT architectures, and helped accelerate adoption to a six-fold increase in usage across its client base. Global industry leaders use Skylight on smart glasses to further increase productivity, cut costs and reduce errors across their operations in more than a dozen countries.

“We are ramping up our use of Skylight and wearables inside our operations. Boeing is seeing multiple aircraft manufacturing lines benefit from the solution, and we now want to introduce AR into the services part of our business so we may service our own, and third-party products, for our end-customers,” said Ted Colbert, CIO of The Boeing Company and SVP of Information Technology & Data Analytics.

“Upskill’s augmented reality platform for smart glasses has enabled greater efficiencies in Ryder’s warehouses—from saving time and improving accuracy, to streamlining the jobs of hands-on warehouse personnel,” said Gary Allen, Vice President of Supply Chain Excellence, Ryder. “The use of wearable, hands-free technology powered by Skylight has decreased the time it takes to pick and scan inventory while improving efficiency. At Ryder, we’re all about investing in technologies that ensure safety and reliability, as well as improved productivity, visibility, and customer service levels.”

“As we continue to invest heavily in our infrastructure to help our customers to connect, our ability to service and maintain network performance is critical to the success of our business,” said Sanjay Rai, General Manager, Strategy and Productivity, Telstra Network Construction & Services. “We believe that trialing Upskill’s Skylight platform for our AR pilot program will allow us to test Upskill’s new technology as a way to connect our field technicians to network equipment in ways we couldn’t before, and potentially contribute to improving productivity and driving down costs.”

Upskill’s growing list of strategic investors, including GE Ventures and Boeing HorizonX, now joined by Accenture and Cisco Investments, points to the increasing importance of AR technology in the market, the connected worker and the Internet of Things ecosystem.

“We saw substantial growth in the last year further amplified by the launch of our new product release. That acceleration is what led our investors to participate in this new funding round,” said Brian Ballard, co-founder and CEO, Upskill. “Upskill’s group of investors now include leaders from all parts of the industrial augmented reality ecosystem, which is an important signal in the market and speaks to how we collectively contribute to digital transformation.”

The full press release can be viewed here.

Upskill’s member profile can be viewed here.

Historically, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have teetered precariously on the edge of practicality (outside of gaming), with limited perceived benefits and functionality, prohibitive costs, and developmental roadblocks. However, new key applications will drive utility interest in digital reality deployment in operations, training, marketing, and other departments. Meanwhile, hardware and device characteristics will either drive or slow the deployment of AR and VR devices. Navigant Research has identified six critical characteristics that a digital reality device must possess for significant penetration into utility operations, and each is identified and discussed in detail in the report.

This Navigant Research report discusses the latest market trends in digital reality for grid applications and explores current and potential applications for small- and large-scale utility deployment. It provides detailed and actionable recommendations on how utilities and device vendors can address the fast-changing market. The study also provides an analysis of key market developments and identifies several prominent AR and VR devices in the market today.

Key Questions Addressed:

• What are augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) devices?
• What are the AR and VR applications for utility offices?
• What are the AR and VR applications for utility field operations?
• What are the benefits of digital reality?
• What are the key challenges related to AR and VR deployments?
• How can utilities implement digital reality into operations?

Who needs this report?

• Utilities
• Software companies
• Augmented reality (AR) device manufacturers
• Virtual reality (VR) device manufacturers
• App developers
• Utility solutions providers
• Investor community

Deloitte’s survey finds executives optimistic about the potential impact of Industry 4.0, few are confident they are ready to lead its implementation.

Only 14 percent of CXOs are highly confident their organizations are ready to fully harness Industry 4.0’s changes.  Deloitte surveyed 1,600 C-level executives across 19 countries to explore a core question: How ready are the leaders of businesses and government agencies to harness the full potential of Industry 4.0 to benefit their clients, their people, their organization, their communities, and society more broadly?

Just 14 percent of respondents are highly confident their organizations are ready to fully harness the changes associated with Industry 4.0

Only a quarter of CXOs surveyed are highly confident they have the right workforce composition and skill sets needed for the future, despite 84 percent saying they are doing everything they can to create a workforce for Industry 4.0

CXOs overwhelmingly (87 percent) believe Industry 4.0 will lead to more equality and stability, and three-quarters say business will have much more influence than governments and other entities in shaping this future

Yet less than a quarter of those surveyed believe their own organizations hold much influence over critical factors such as education, sustainability, and social mobility

Deloitte’s research found that while CXOs see new business or delivery models as the biggest threat to their organizations, they are largely using Industry 4.0 technologies as a tool to make existing operations more efficient and cost-effective. That leaves untapped tremendous opportunities to pursue innovative business models that may not only drive value for direct and indirect stakeholders, but better protect them from disruption.

The report then goes on to share details of the four major areas of impact in more detail: society, strategy, talent and technology.

This article on enterprise AR trends was authored by Brian Ballard, CEO of Upskill, and member of The AREA and appeared on IoT Agenda Network.

If the record-setting growth of AR/VR technology at the Consumer Electronics Show is any indication, we are in for an exciting year for augmented reality in the enterprise. But as with any fast-evolving technology, it is challenging to differentiate hype from reality (no pun intended) — especially when everyone is eager to weigh in on the road ahead. To make sense of this noisy, yet exciting, market, my team at Upskill and I have sifted through the countless AR predictions out there and compared them to what we are seeing and hearing from our customers and partners. The result is a definitive list of the top five enterprise AR trends for 2018. Here’s what you need to know:

Prediction #1: Enterprise AR will become essential to the creation, delivery and service of the world’s best-known brands.
We are now seeing competitive pressures for greater brand differentiation, faster time-to-service and first-time quality as the biggest drivers of AR adoption in nearly every step of the supply chain. Use cases are emerging throughout the product lifecycle that are impacting large, consumer packaged goods companies — not just manufacturers and heavy-duty service organizations. In fact, Gartner predicted that AR will be adopted across multiple business lines in 30% of large enterprises by 2020. The operative piece here is not the percentage, but rather the prediction that AR will be deployed across organizations as part of a broader digital transformation strategy. We should finally see large enterprises moving out of “pilot purgatory” and scaling their deployments into new areas that deliver even greater ROI.

Prediction #2: Service and logistics will take pole position in the race for broad adoption of AR.
While the use of AR in manufacturing remains a significant growth and investment area, we’ll see service and logistics’ growth rate pull ahead in 2018. If you look at the isolated use cases in these markets, there is a lot of intrinsic repeatability of high-value applications, like warehouse picking or field service troubleshooting. IDC reinforces this point, as the analyst firm believes 25% of field service technicians will use AR by 2020. This adoption growth echoes the move toward service monetization, which is becoming a huge business driver for those trying to differentiate in the field service market. The faster you can service your customers — and with first-time quality — the better.

Prediction #3: AR will become increasingly more accessible for enterprises.
This prediction is driven primarily by vendors in the enterprise space that are adapting to how customers develop AR workflows. For large organizations, it’s typically process or manufacturing engineers — not software developers — creating these workflows. Fortunately, application development tools are emerging that allow people who are not necessarily technical in nature to develop custom workflows and translate them into AR experiences. IDC even suggests, “Improvements in simple (“low-/no-code”) development tools will expand the number of non-tech developers, and by 2021, these non-traditional tech developers will build 20% of business applications and 30% new application features (60% by 2027).” The resulting lower entry barrier to AR development will accelerate broader adoption and empower those who are closest to the work at hand.

Prediction #4: Advances in speech will accelerate and make voice a vital interaction paradigm.
Delivering information via AR-powered wearables is an extremely effective way to communicate actionable, pragmatic work instructions. And, in hands-on work environments, speaking to the device is by far the most compelling way to exchange this information. As Forrester predicts, “We’ll see increasing demand for developers that know how to build augmented reality- and natural language processing-based experiences.” Although voice is still limited by how many words a user can say at a certain time and in a natural manner, it will still be a top interaction paradigm for AR in 2018.

Prediction #5: Tech giants will drive 3D content for both consumer and enterprise applications.
We’ve seen Facebook acquire Oculus, a VR company, and Microsoft acquire Simplygon, a content conversion decimation tool. We also saw Google and Apple unveil AR toolkits, which sets us up for a near future where, as Wiredpredicts, “a set of always-on glasses that will blur the line between the physical world and a digital contract made of pure information.” Such investments by tech behemoths will lead to the explosion of ready-to-go AR content, as well as the emergence of toolsets that make creating that content easier in both the consumer and enterprise spaces. At the same time, this raises the bar for how enterprises engage with their workforces through content-rich, bidirectional communication between people and systems of record.

As 2018 progresses, we will keep a close eye on these trends and how they not only impact the enterprise, but also the future of work. With expanded use cases, rapid content creation, advances in speech and new development toolsets, AR will empower workforces to drive real ROI and lead us to greater adoption — at last.

Upskill’s member profile can be read here.

Member news from XMReality!

At the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018 XMReality signed two new customers; an American Defense group and Electrolux, a multinational home appliance manufacturer.

This is great news for our member and we are very pleased for them that increasingly more enterprises are taking up the use of Augmented Reality within their business.

“XMReality clearly appeared to us as the best solution in the area, especially the hand overlay feature which makes the support extremely intuitive and easy”, says Jean-Noel Thibault, Digital Transformation Director, Electrolux Major Appliances, EMEA.

XMReality says: “We are very happy to include them into our XMReality family!”

XMReality’s AREA member profile can be viewed here.

PCTEL, a leader in Performance Critical TELecom solutions, has developed an Augmented Reality SeeWave® concept which was demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC) in Barcelona.  SeeWave is an interference locating system in the form of a handheld hunting tool, used to track unwanted signals that harm network performance by wireless operators.

Jeff Miller, Senior Vice President and GM at RF Solutions, is quoted to have said that it is vital to have efficient interference hunting for operators to maximise capacity and add spectrum.

PCTEL’s AR-based interference detection system concept is relevant to the future of test.  SeeWave’s new Android user interface will enable quicker and easier interference tracking using flex scanning receivers.

David Neumann, CEO of PCTEL, is also quoted to have said that the company is looking forward to seeing how AR can help their customers with wireless network performance.

An article on Catalonia Trade & Investment recently reported on the Remote Eye startup which displayed its technology for technical assistance via video using Augmented Reality.

The startup offers innovative technology allowing video tech support via smart glasses and AR. Using the tech, experts can assist people anywhere across the globe to offer a quick and effective diagnosis.

The AR glasses essentially become the eyes and hands of the expert, advising the technician remotely via text or voice messages. The proposed tool additionally feeds a knowledge base for the organisation that can then store solutions to common tech issues in a shared environment.

Since starting a year ago, Remote Eye has a dozen global clients and is one of the startups forming part of the Catalan Government stand at the digital entrepreneurship fair 4YFN 2018 celebrated within the Mobile World Congress. As part of the Horizon 2020 programme, Remote Eye has also been accepted for a SME Instrument Phase 1.

An article on CXO Today recently discussed the digital-heavy economy developing in India. The drive of this transformation is the reduced cost of transacting via online banking and the fact that this costs even less when the channel is mobile.

Efficiency and competitiveness are the main components of digital transformation; it requires deep understanding of present and emerging business process models as well as disruptive digital technology.

Technologies that enable transformation, for example Augmented Reality can improve education and learning, and automated reasoning can improve transaction processing. Key practises allow digital transformation to be optimised, and the correct soft skills allow it to be sustained.

In response to the increasing digital environment, many organisations are including or changing roles to have a digital focus. This synchronicity increases efficiency as well as allowing companies to become something completely different. Being able to drive transformation is one of the key values of technology.

Leaders and disruptors are moving towards delivering new value to customers to improve customer experience. Companies believe they are innovative due to changing tactics, investing in new tech, and employing tech experts.

The article concludes by stating that businesses must proactively innovate in order to stay ahead in an evolving marketplace.