Augmented Reality refers to combination of real world information and computer generated data. The idea is to add information on top of what you see to make more information available to you. The image on the side is one basic implementation of augmented reality.
A few years back, this sort of technology could only be seen in hollywood productions (remember how terminator saw the world, with lots of text and numbers beside images?), now it is on its way to hit the mass market. Let's see some of it's uses.
I'll start with a cool demo on star trek. First let's watch the video:
The great thing is, this is live today. Anyone with a PC that has a camera can test this. Check it out here.
Also, the CNN hologram interview in November 2008 was another use of augmented reality. I have to say this was a bit cheeky though, as people in the room didn't see anything, but the hologram appeared only on TV. Still a good step in the right direction.
Besides the geeky implications of this technology, there are two monetization opportunities that can be captured rather soon: Gaming and Apparel.
The opportunity in gaming is pretty obvious, I've covered what's coming here. The market is already there, if we keep in mind that [$ = user x $/user], better technology implementation will both 1) make the current customer base happier with more gaming applications [higher $/user] and 2) make gaming more usable by a larger audience [more users] so the $ pie will grow by both sides of the equation.
The opportunity in apparel is also interesting. Augmented reality can be used to improve user experience in online apparel sales, which is rather weak now. According to emarketer, consumers in the UK spent 57 pounds to online and 136 pounds to electronics (and 67 pounds to beer and spirits) on average [1]. In real world, apparel spend per capita is obviously not half of electronics for the majority so there clearly is some opportunity there.
I don't have data for this, but chances are, the reason why people don't buy clothing online is because they don't feel comfortable with what they're buying: will it fit, how will it really look etc. I don't think people are fond of going to crowded stores to browse thousands of irrelevant stuff in order to pick a few (my wife can always prove me wrong though ;-) ).
Below is a video of an example technology from Zugara to illustrate what I mean by improving user experience. The application is very basic for now, and in my humble opinion not 'there' yet, but gives you the idea of what is ahead of us.
Who knows, perhaps the infamous boo.com was only 10 years ahead of its time.
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Picture credit: HowStuffWorks
[1] December 2008 data. Full info is here, but you'll need subscription.
