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May 21, 2018
The reality of augmented reality: strong growth in unexpected places

Augmented reality on the rise, but not as we expected it Automotive and retail sectors helping to push up the spend Retail AR will involve ‘bricks and mortar’ staff, not their customers Augmented Reality on the whole appears to be on an upward trajectory, but not necessarily in the directions that were first plotted for it.

It’s been a slow burn, but the concept of adding digitally generated text and imagery onto a digital field of view (on a smartphone screen, on or through smart glasses) is finally starting to pop up for various applications and make a difference.

As a result market watchers have been upping their expectations. Last month ABI Research noted how the automotive industry is applying a major AR push for its use right across the auto value chain, from design to sales. It estimates the global smart glasses shipments for the automotive industry use will hit 1.7 million in 2022. The total automotive AR market is expected to grow at CAGR of 177 per cent to reach US$5.5 billion in 2022.

mobilityView believes that cellular data usage will explode at a rate even faster to the 1,000% increase that Ericsson is forecasting in their November 2017 Mobility Report. On a percentage basis the rate of growth in legitimate business related data usage will grow even faster than the 10x trend that Ericsson is forecasting. The rate of growth will be faster because Business Usage is a tiny fraction of total usage; and will be coming off a much larger base.

In a mobile first / cloud first world data explodes in general; but the pace of growth for legitimate business usage will be much faster than personal. We anticipate that personal usage will represent an increasing percentage of the total; but the growth rates will be lower than business due to coming off a much higher base number.

The reality of augmented reality: strong growth in unexpected places

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