Tag Archive for: Augmented Reality

State of the Market Report: Internet of Things 2016

IoT Coffee MachineThe Internet of Things is said to have a major impact on the business world according to Jared Newman. Goldman Sachs even thinks that IoT opportunity for industrials could amount to $2 trillion by 2020. Connected cars, connected utility, connected houses, connected vineyards, connected streets, connected everything – the opportunities seem incredable bearing in mind that with IoT everyting can be addressed in the future.

Now, a recent report called “State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016,” shows that the Internet of Things (IoT) is already mainstream.

The motivation behind the high adoption rate is quite obvious: The opportunity for revenue growth drives many managers towards IoT adoption with data being the monetization engine behind it. Still, just 8% of the respondents make use of more than 25% of their IoT data these days.

Not suprisingly, the report also highlights that enterprises are turning to startups to help accelerate their IoT growth. In 2015, enterprise IoT startup companies outpaced funding for consumer startup companies by 75%.

Verizon’s experts think that IoT will continue to be a revenue driver for businesses both large and small due to the confluence of five macrotrends:

1. Consumer usage of smartphones.
High expectations to automation possibilities as of simplified interface. 81% of IoT adopters in the public sector believe that their citizens increasingly expect them to offer enhanced services from data and IoT.

2. Data monetization is wanted.
By 2018, almost 50% of businesses expect to be using more than 25%of their data. Descriptive data collection will become predictive and prescriptive data analytics. Paradigm shift from “big data” to domain experts expected.

3. Regulatory landscape will bring right ecosystem partners together to drive industry standards.
In the US, with the Drug Supply Chain Act manufacturers until late 2017 will implement systems to electronically transfer and store transaction histories for their prescription drugs including shipment information across their distribution and supply chain. Result: Thwart counterfeiting drugs and savings of $75 billion annually according to the World Health Organization.

4. Democratization of innovation by network connectivity, low power devices and IoT platforms.
Businesses can scale their IoT deployments from millions to billions of connections more cost-efficiently. With the new 5G, autonomous solutions such as cars and robotics will become a reality and new categories of uses cases will evolve, such as virtual and augmented reality for IoT deployments.

5. Security experts keep up with the development of technology by looking to arising threat vectors
Some old, some new – that will impact IoT deployments and ongoing operations. Data privacy, protection and processing will remain the biggest challenge for security experts.

Spot On!
Sometimes reports do not look at the data challenge of the IoT development in my eyes. The interesting aspect is that IoT offers some incredible opportunities to improve our lives, simplify our ways of health tracking and be informed about the status of our cars and houses. However, most of the use cases are often based on some cloud services that people do not trust in as the generated data is stored in some unknown data center somewhere in the world. I sometimes wonder, why companies don’t start to save the data in a personal private cloud that can be added as an add-on service to the IoT business.

But hey, maybe I am asking for too much at this stage of the IoT status. Thoughts?

Screens & the future: Samsung sees a display centric world

Every screen manufacturer seems to have their own vision on how the world will have some format of flat screens following us, pushing us and making our lives “better”. We have seen the screens of the future with 3D and Augmented Reality merging, the car rear screens by Toyota, Microsoft’s productivity vision of the future, or Corning’s Day Made of Glass.

Now, Samsung shows us a world where even cutting boards get their display. What is your view? Are they going too far? Or is this a future you can envision?

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Report: comScore unveils insights in main mobile development for 2013

comScore Mobile 2013In a recent report called “2013 Mobile Future in Focus” comScore released their outlook for mobile trends. The report shows the U.S. mobile and connected device landscape in 2012, which is meant to the set the stage for the international expansion of the mobile revolution. It offers insights into mobile media consumption, mobile networks, platforms, as well as OEMs. It also includes key mobile market insights from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, and Japan.

The report illustrates the following trends for the mobile year 2013…

Multi-mobile use shapes the “Brave New Digital World”
The U.S. is surpassing 125 million U.S. consumers and tablets in mobile consumption. More than 50 million own smart mobile devices which make consumers being always connected. Americans spend more than one out of every three minutes online on mobiles. Does this show the end of the desktop?

Smartphones surpass 50% penetration and start ‘Late Majority’ of adopters
In 2012 the U.S. smartphone market became the year of mobile by finally surpassed 50% market penetration. It enters the “late majority” stage of the technology adoption curve. Smartphone subscribers increased 29% from a year ago and 99% from two years ago. 72% of all newly-bought devices were smartphones.

comScore Mobile 2013 Smartphone Tablet Ownership

Android and iOS Control U.S. Smartphone Market
Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS dominate the U.S. smartphone landscape with almost 90% of the market today. The well-developed app ecosystems makes it even more difficult for competing platforms to narrow the gap.

Samsung makes splash in smartphone OEM market
Samsung strongly competes more and more with Apple that is still the leading smartphone OEM. The year-over-year increase of more than 100% from Samsung and a two-year increase of more than 400% shows how much they are challenging Apple. The gap between the two competitors is steadily narrowing though.

High-Speed mobile connectivity speeds up mobile content consumption
Wider availability of high-speed internet access has increased the average user’s media consumption experience. Default Wi-Fi accessibility for smartphones and tablets like in coffee shops contributes to the new workplace and a better browsing experience for users. But also the availability of better networks speed (4G and LTE technology) will leverage the mobile content adoption.

comScore Mobile 2013 Content Per Topic

Spot On!
The report shows that 2013 was kind of the “year of mobile”. With the rise of smartphone adoption to an over 50% penetration but also tablets becoming more prevalent, it seems that the world is moving more and more away from desktop internet usage. Mobile devices make up the digital media consumption of consumers these days. Obviously, marketers and media companies need to adapt their businesses to the emerging mobile multi-platform world but should also see the opportunity of mobile car technology (Google Glass Project), Augmented Reality (IKEA), QR codes (Adidas) or “mobile storytelling” (AUDI).

So now up to you. What has changed in your mobile adaption from last year? What are you missing in terms of mobile marketing development? And what would you be open for when marketers address you with mobile content?

How the Tokyo Newspaper uses an AR app for kids

Many newspapers are trying to find new ways into the digital future. The Tokyo Newspaper is facing the same challenge. However, Dentsu Tokyo may have found some good idea how to connect with readers with an Augmented Reality Reader app for kids. It is transforming paper into real life experiences and create a “Newspaper for family and children communication”. Their iPhone App identifies with markers different articles and advertisements on single pages of the newspaper, by overlaying the educational content of the article specifically for kids. Although we have seen this all over the world, I think, it is definitely an idea to get kids back to reading the papers.

Do you think this idea will bring some new readers for the newspapers or magazines? Is it an option to get kids reading paper?

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McDonalds App: Check out where your Mac was made

McDonalds is one of those companies where people want to know exactly how their food was made. And sometimes they need to do something not to get into the spotlight of a shitstorm. Now, the Australian team of McDonalds, with the help of DDB Australia, knows how to do some prevention – with their app “TrackMyMacca”.

This app lets Australians have a look in the McDonalds kitchen (and before ingredients even gets there) of their meal. It dives straight into their supply-chain and augmented reality to transmit an interactive experience that makes McDonald’s delivery process transparent, “showing where your ingredients come from you are eating”.

In my eyes, this is an interesting experience, and makes eating your burger alone a bit more exciting… and engages the customers. Ever thought about how you could do that with your product and services? Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Augmented Reality: Sight and the Google's glass project

Graduates need to take a look into the future. Some do it quite well and are creating an exciting picture of times and technical evolution ahead of us. The following short film “Sight” by Sight Systems was done from Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo. It was developed from a graduation project from Bezaleal academy of arts and is definitely worth watching.

It somehow reminded me of the Google Glass project, a research and development program with the intention to create products that are hands free displaying information. For now, these are currently just available to most smartphone users, and allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands, in a manner which has been compared to the iPhone feature Siri, as Google explains.

Whether there are similarities between the two projects or not, the film tells a story of a world which gets new impact through augmented reality glass technology. And if we will wear traditional glasses, contact lenses or whether these are implanted in the end, only the future can tell. However, the vision created in this film is scary, eye-opening to AR technology opportunities, and somehow disturbing the fascination of the unknown, unexperienced and undiscovered. Life as it is.

But now, watch it and tell us what you are thinking…?

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For 2013, IKEA will launch its first augmented-reality catalogue

While many companies still think about the value of Augmented Reality (AR) applications, IKEA is already using it to their advantage. In their new catalogue for 2013, IKEA embraces the opportunities to use AR to illustrate the right context for their products and to give some inspiration to customers how our homes might look like when we buy their furniture and accessoires. The catalogue will come out on July 30th and the IKEA CATALOGUE App will follow on July 31st in the app shops. The new catalogues sets a standard for all retailers offering catalogues in my eyes.

How IKEA sees their customer and how they use their solutions, can be seen from the following statement…

“For instance, we’ve stopped dividing life at home into rooms. Bedrooms, for example – they’re as varied as the ways people sleep. We’ve taken away our notions of what defined a ‘bedroom’ and replaced them with the idea ‘sleeping.’ We know that some homes don’t have ‘bedrooms’ – they have one 24-hour room where people live and sleep. Life is about activities; not the walls that define where they unfold.”

PS: I am desperately waiting to see their catalogue. Although I fear my wife might like it and then drag me along to their shops.

What do you think about the new catalogue and the concept behind it?

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Augmented Reality for kids – Sesame Street

Qualcomm is always working on new opportunities for Augmented Reality. One of their latest kind of blew my mind. This new technology solution not only enables developers to create some new app in minutes, it also really connects the offline and the online reality.

Now, Qualcomm comes up with an Augmented Reality app for kids which is illustrated with the Sesame Street character Erni and Bert which Netbook News just published. Both characters come alive immediately when putting them on a specially designed board, or when you put a television screen on the board.

Just imagine what opportunities this offers in terms education and knowledge you can integrate in this technology. Smashing!

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Study: Web-traffic boosts in-store sales

In a recent study the research companies comScore, Accenture and dunnhumbyUSA found some significant relevance between in-store sales and a company’s web presence. The study was based on a panel of CPG customers and one million U.S. Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to have their online activities continuously measured and matched to their in-store brand buying behavior provided by dunnhumbyUSA.

The report comes to the conclusion that consumers who visit a website prior to their shopping experience in a company store spend 34% more with that company and 57% more on products or services based on their specific industry sector. It also states that visitors of brand websites are frequent buyers of the brand in retail stores. It shows that 42% more of these clients finish their transactions than non-visitors. Furthermore, website visitors are also heavier buyers in a brand’s product category. They are spending 53% more in their category dollars than non-visitors.

“Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.”John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, dunnhumbyUSA

And again another study highlights the importance of content marketing as the new emerging trend in marketing. Shoppers were more aggressive in their approach to understand and evaluate their purchases prior to their visit in shops as a result of the massive information access through the web. According to the research, content marketing plays a significant role here. So, campaigns on the web not only add value to web shopping but also -and for some companies and brands more importantly- will help to drive and boost in-store habits and sales – apart from positioning a brand’s capability.

“Marketers who create compelling (brand) website experiences for consumers are extremely effective in driving incremental and profitable in-store sales. Analysis shows that consumers visiting the best of the 10 CPG brand websites evaluated in the research study, spent over 200% more on the brand than non-visitors.” Jerry Lohse, Senior Director, Accenture Interactive

Based on the fact that Brafton reported some weeks ago that the average consumer visits more than 10 web pages before a purchase decision, this study marks an important point in the relevance between online and offline shopping. This might be catalyzed by the new opportunities that smartphones, tablets or Augmented Reality (see real-life community shopping) offer, and shows the straight relationship between the two shopping experiences which more and more merge to one close shopping cycle.

Spot On!
More companies are realizing that offering web shoppers the same information and service as in-stores will lead to more purchase at both ends of the shopping cycle: online and at offline locations. The challenge for companies is to differentiate the shopping experience by using SoLoMo (social – local – mobile). Here the question for the future will remain whether in-store shopping needs to become more of a lifestyle experience or adventure to attract more consumers to join in-store activity (see IKEA Sleepover), or wether people will want to have real people around them and thus make it a social reality world, rather than a social web world…

Community Shopping on the street – NET-A-PORTER.COM's Window Shop

Augmented Reality shopping is definitely a new trend these days. NET-A-PORTER have launched their Augmented Reality Shopping Windows in different capitals around the world like Sidney, Munich, London, Paris and New York.

The following video demo comes from late last year’s Fashion Night Out celebrations in London and New York. It will be rolled out globally now for the new Karl by Karl Lagerfeld collection. Consumers need to download the NET-A-PORTER iPhone/iPad app, then visit the stores and can use the Augmented Reality like a new shopping experience.

When pointing the iPad camera at the window, this will publish 360 degree product models doing their best on a video catwalk. It also displays product information, the clothes price and obviously the ability to purchase immediately.

Isn’t this a cool idea to offer a 24/7 shopping life? These doors are always open in the future. Well, ok their online shop as well but it is a different kind of shopping experience right…? Community shopping on the street…

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THX for sharing!