ABI Research’s Hot Tech Innovators report identifies new and notable AR form factor and use cases
Tech giants and newcomers are pushing AR innovation. Source: shutterstock.com
A market-foresight advisory firm ABI Research examined the current Augmented Reality market and identified a selection of the most exciting and potentially impactful innovations and the companies behind them.
Both consumer and enterprise ecosystems are seeing a progression. Enterprise-focused hardware players, such as RealWear and Microsoft, continue to carve out their potential value for corporate endeavors through high ROI use cases like remote expertise and training. These enterprise endeavors need backends to help manage devices and visualize collected data, which is where companies like Augmate and Virtualitics come in. New hardware entrants like North and nReal are chasing the ideal smart glasses form factor, which may not be specifically targeted at consumers, but does meet form factor expectations for the space. Others sit somewhere in between: Magic Leap is searching for their next headline with telecom partnerships, Mira is taking a mobile VR like approach to AR with a head-mounted phone housing, and Niantic (Pokemon Go developers) is expanding their IP into 5G-enabled location-based opportunities.
