As augmented reality moves away from our phones, the time might be now for investment

When it comes to investing in emerging technologies, there are few more exciting and faster developing than that of augmented reality (AR) and remote AR.

A significant number of the world’s largest tech companies are already beginning to turn their collective attention to AR.

Apple has been rumoured to be developing its own augmented reality headset while our understanding of what could be made possible by AR is only expanding thanks to the recent emergence of Remote AR.

Remote AR is a term that refers to technology designed to help improve AR integration into gaming and daily life.

Image: PwC

Industry excitement surrounding both augmented reality and Remote AR is palpable – so much so that PwC has forecast that investments in the technology could expand fourfold in some sectors.

But what role will Remote AR play in bringing value to investors? And can augmented reality continue to build its momentum into the next decade? Here’s a glance at what investors can expect when investing in an augmented future.

Remote control

The arrival of Remote AR carries clear and potentially revolutionary benefits for a range of industries.

We often associate both augmented reality and virtual reality with entertainment and video games – and we’ve good reason to when news of VR concerts are continually filling column inches. Remote AR is no different in terms of maintaining a level of focus on optimising our recreation time. WATTY is a fresh Remote AR brand that enables users to create digital avatars that not only interact with the real-world but with friends’ avatars from across the world too.

Despite Remote AR appearing to be a seamless fit for gaming and entertainment, there are key investment opportunities among more collaborative and potentially life-saving fields.

Spatial utilises Remote AR for collaboration purposes and has the power to turn just about any area into the sort of intuitive, action-packed office that wouldn’t look out of place in the film Minority Report.

Multiple users are able to overlay and interact with the augmented environment to delegate and discuss countless tasks and digest plenty of visual information. Similarly, applications like Avatar Chat also enables multiple users to visually interact with multiple friends in a more social setting.

One of the most important uses for Remote AR can be found emerging within healthcare. Imagine how significantly our access to high-quality healthcare would improve if surgeons could call on augmented reality glasses capable of displaying information in real-time that helps to guide them through actions that require flawless accuracy. Or if we could utilise Remote AR to gain second opinions on diagnoses.

Proximie is an organisation that’s keen to realise the potential that Remote AR holds for healthcare. In an industry that finds itself continually overrun, AR could make for the perfect solution in bringing significantly swifter service.

The rise of augmentation

Augmented reality has enjoyed something of a spectacular rise from residing in the shadow cast by its sci-fi enthused sibling, virtual reality, to being an omnipresent asset to just about every smartphone user in the world.

Snapchat filters aside, augmented reality is used in numerous iPhone applications – including the built-in Measure feature that’s capable of visually measuring out just about any surface or object.

Needless to say, Niantic has played a significant role in introducing Augmented Reality to many of us in its triumphant gaming app Pokemon Go!, which encourages users to capture digital monsters while out and about and battle them at places of interest. Such was the appeal of Pokemon Go!’s augmented format that since its 2016 release, the app has surpassed 800 million downloads worldwide.

So resounding has the rise of augmented reality been, that software solutions company The App is forecasting that the industry surrounding AR will rise from $27 million in 2018 to $209 million by 2022.

Image: TheAppSolutions

Cause for investment

Such seismic figures are bound to be a very welcome sight for prospective investors, and leading technology company AppReal, has directly identified AR as particularly advantageous for investment ahead of its VR sibling due to the hardware and software needed to implement augmented reality being readily available and currently more practical.

There’s also the matter of the company that investors will be in, and with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook already holding big ambitions for AR in the coming years, anybody looking to weigh in on augmented reality is bound to be in good company.

Elsewhere, Google is already running plenty of successful AR programs, including its convenient ‘Translate’ service that’s capable of superimposing textual translations on to of foreign texts and signage.

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Photo by My name is Yanick on Unsplash

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