Augmented reality gets into its stride in 2018

Major media brands are leading the charge for AR in 2018, including Harry Potter, Star Wars and Pokemon Go. While they will help improve consumer awareness, and create features to get smartphone users upgrading to the new ARKit and ARCore compatible devices, there’s also plenty of big business interest.

Brands are looking to AR to help add a unique feature to their apps, beyond magic mirrors or photo mode, the standard gimmicks of choice so far.

Companies see uses of the technology helping improve customer service, maintenance and other tasks by providing on-screen information, graphics and instructions when it comes to support issues.

These drivers, combined with smartphone makers promoting AR as one of the key reasons to upgrade to the latest models will continue to help push the technology to the front of the tech agenda in 2018.

Along with navigation apps, such as Skyline, and growing datasets that can be used to drive new AR app ideas, 2018 will see massive interest in AR, starting at CES this weekend and expanding across the year.

For reference, there are around 1,000 apps using ARKit at the start of the year, expect that number to rocket come 2019.