The augmented reality industry has seen huge growth in the first half of 2018, according to a report from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund).
The group this week released its bi-annual Global Augmented Reality Landscape overview for the first half of the year, finding that the number of qualified AR companies has increased by 50 percent over the last six months. This is likely due to the increased number of AR-capable smartphones as Apple and Google continue to roll out and refine their respective AR platforms (ARKit and ARCore) on iOS and Android. The image below documents all of the companies acknowledged by The VR Fund to be working in the space right now.
That said, the report notes that consumer-level AR apps haven’t seen huge success on the level that Pokemon Go established two years ago now though growth in this sector is still the largest. More growth came in other categories like AR smart glasses, 3D tools and software development kits (SDKs). Social AR is already seeing heavy usage on platforms like Snap and Facebook.
This report arrives after Magic Leap provided the latest look at its anticipated AR headset, Magic Leap One, earlier this week. The device, which is capable of projecting virtual images into real life spaces, plans to start shipping to developers this summer. How will the industry evolve as more hardware finally arrives?
