Augmented Reality Is Taking over the World… Well at least the iPhone!
It seems to be all about augmented reality on the iPhone at the moment with lots of applications soon to be released on the iPhone 3GS. But what is that all about? It was described on Mobile Marketing Watch as “a live direct or indirect view of a real-world environment whose elements are supplemented with-, or augmented by computer-generated imagery. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in meaningful context with environmental elements. In plain English, it’s the concept of layering computer-generated imagery over a real-world environment, thus creating “augmented” reality”.
So what does that mean for iPhone apps and more generally for mobile marketing? Just the beginning of a new age of how people use their mobile phones and advertisers can reach them. One of the examples of augmented reality is, Acrossair, the nearest tube application. You launch the application and put your phone in front of you. Thanks to the compass and camera in the smart phone, the application literally points (with arrows) where the tube stations are. Have a look at it.
Now the new application for Yelp, a community places review website, does the same thing but for restaurants, bars and other places. So better for your business to be listed on the website and having a good review. And as the feature of augmented reality is going to spread in the smart phone universe, and for sure not only on the iPhone, you should prepare your business for it.
But what are the possibilities? Combined with GPS function, the location based applications or programs would incorporate this feature in the coming years. Then you can imagine using it for image recognition to provide customers with more information on anything related to your company (mainly products and services). Moreover, you could even have a bigger impact on the way people look at things: the Layar application is like basically providing people with a new pair of eyes loaded with information on their environment. Scary or not, we are not that far away from the scanning advertisement system of Minority Report.
If you want more information on augmented reality, you can have a look at gamesalfresco.com and GigantiCo (recommendations of @chrisgrayson)
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