The Impact of Augmented Reality on Business

Augmented reality is a huge buzzword prompting businesses to shift their concerns to this technology and developers now have access to some of the most powerful frameworks in order to create AR apps. The augmented reality benefits for business allow for a high potential of business growth and, in fact, augmented reality has prevailed in several business domains including gaming, traveling, entertainment, media, education and many more. This technology, as a whole, provides plenty of opportunities for both new and established businesses that make innovation a priority.

By 2020, AR is expected to acquire 1 billion users and the worldwide shipment of smart augmented reality glasses is expected to reach 5.4 million units. As a whole, the global AR market is expected to reach $90 billion dollars by 2020. In fact, the gaming industry will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AR growth. Games such as PokemonGo clearly demonstrated the potential of AR and by 2025 the worldwide user base of both AR and VR games is expected to grow 216 million users and will be worth $11.6 million dollars.

Let’s take a look at how augmented reality for business promotes growth in today’s competitive environment.

The Future of Marketing is in AR

AR has already been recognized as an innovative and creative way to connect with the general audience and customer base. Many advertising companies are expected to take advantage of the many opportunities AR provides to improve the way they communicate with customers. For example, AR allows the creation of 3D thinking where users not only see the ads that are right in front of them but also the ones that are around them i.e. in their peripheral vision. With AR, businesses can create even more detailed ads thanks to higher resolution. All of these factors will influence marketing in the remainder of this year and beyond.

Reach the Widest Audience Possible

A humongous chunk of online users have already adopted augmented reality and the statistics show a substantial increase in the amount of AR shipments over the past couple of years. Also, based on the amount of PokemonGo users, we can clearly extrapolate where the reach of AR is going. Augmented reality apps are a big hit with the young people. This can serve as a wonderful advertising opportunity for any company regardless of industry. For example, by releasing an application to the Oculus Store or other similar app marketplace makes it automatically available to mobile device users who are constantly on the lookout for interesting software.

By casting a wider net the of users or customer will increase, which, in turn, will lead to greater revenue. Get there with AR.

Apple AR Kit

When Apple launched its AR Kit, it went all in on the future of AR justifying this by saying that it will have a tremendous effect on business. The AR Kit allows developers to work on AR apps to integrate digital experiences in the physical business world. The application has worked just fine with the latest version of iOS and the latest iPhone which prompted many businesses to opt in favor of AR development in the future.

Social Media Will Not Be the Same

Many social media platforms will incorporate AR thus allowing for a greater immersive experience and, consequently, greater opportunities for businesses as well. Facebook is already working on smart AR glasses to take advantage of augmented reality in its platform and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already referred to AR as the next computing platform. This is a clear indicator that augmented reality will have a huge impact on a lot of businesses over the coming years.

A More Personalized Shopping Experience

Thanks to the development of cutting-edge apps, brands and businesses have taken advantage by developing apps that can be personalized and customized to help each and every customer to take away the fear of buyer’s remorse and provide a better shopping experience. For example, let’s take a look at IKEA. Since it could be difficult for some customers to visualize how a particular piece of furniture will look inside their house, they are hesitant to buy it, especially if this furniture is expensive. In fact, 14% of IKEA shoppers take home furniture that is the wrong size. For this reason, IKEA has released a special mobile AR application aimed at demonstrating their products in the most impressive and yet unusual way. The user is able to estimate visually how this or that commodity will fit in their interior. With its help, customers can, for example, easily measure a cataloged nightstand or table to fit a specific place (be it a bedroom or an office space).

For Conclusion

The importance of AR in business is invaluable. It offers so many growth opportunities for businesses and it takes away many pain points customers are feeling. A successful AR implementation into a business model can also highly affect the way people see the stores of future. The successful use of the AR technologies is evident. The astonishing popularity of game apps such as PokémonGo shows that a lot of consumers are ready to adopt this tech and are increasingly looking for new AR experiences.

What is certainly clear is that we are going to see a rise in the adoption of augmented reality applications by construction, architecture, real estate market, interior design, fashion, retail market and other industries in the near future.