Mobile AR is Sexy, But is it Practical?
I read a lot (which probably shocks those of you that know me) of articles, blog posts and the like on Augmented Reality (AR). And it’s interesting to me how much buzz Mobile AR is getting. In fact some articles seem to think that Mobile AR and AR are synonymous… that is, they seem to discuss it as if it’s the only type of AR. There’s some great work being done around the world with Kiosks and Online, yet everyone seems enamored with mobile. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have much of an issue with that (“a rising tide lifts all boats”), but the problem for me, is that the buzz/hype is disproportionate to the near term practicality of the medium. I feel as though you brand and agency folks reading this might be getting a touch misled. The fact remains it just doesn’t make sense for most of you to do a Mobile AR campaign today. In a few years, it will be different (hopefully. I mean remember how it was “the year of mobile” in 1999, and 2000, and 2001, and 2002, and 2003….). But we aren’t talking about 2015 right now, we’re talking about 2010.
Now before I discuss the reasons I feel this way below I just want to make it clear that if you’re doing something with mobile that’s incredibly cool and your main goal is to get press, then my points aren’t applicable. I’m really only focusing on the brands/agencies that want to engage their consumers.
Now let’s get down to it. I think the main reason Mobile AR isn’t practical comes down to primarily two reasons: Technical Issues, and Consumer Reach.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
I wrote at length last August (2009) about the Technical Issues, specifically the inaccuracies of Civilian Grade GPS and the Compasses that are installed on smartphones. So I won’t rehash that here even though the points are still valid a year later (If you want to read that post though, please click here). I would like to bring up a new point briefly though, and that’s Data Accessibility. Simply put, the networks aren’t fast enough yet and web content loads too slow to provide a reliable and satisfying experience for mobile users. That’s not just my opinion, according to an eMarketer report that came out this morning 29% of people feel that the biggest problem with accessing the mobile web is that sites load too slow. Do you think people really want to wait 15 – 30 seconds on a street corner with their phone pointed in a direction waiting for the content to load? I don’t… Will 4G be the answer? Maybe. But what’s the penetration rate of 4G right now? And that gets me to my second point… consumer reach.
CONSUMER REACH
There was a great infographic yesterday on Mashable regarding the popularity of the iPhone. There were some fascinating stats in there. I learned that 83% of Americans have a mobile phone and 25% of phone owners (i.e. that 83%) own a smartphone (both numbers are higher than the rest of the world. Those numbers are 68% and 17% respectively). Now, obviously you need a smart phone to interact with AR, so where does that put us? Roughly 1 in 5 Americans has the technology to interact with your mobile AR execution. Not terrible numbers (as I’m sure you’re targeting the “early adopters” anyways), but it’s not actually the full picture. According to an InfoWeek article “Nielsen reports that 33% of smartphone owners in the U.S. haven’t even subscribed to a data plan”. Obviously why someone would own a smartphone with no data plan is a head-scratcher, but apparently a large number of people do it (and let’s not forget, that was before AT&T and Apple began phasing out the “all you can eat” data plan so it will be interesting to see how people use their phone’s when data is a bit more of a “precious resource”). Of course, no data plan means that 1 in 3 smartphone owners can’t technically access your execution. The potential reach of your execution just got much smaller… Wait, you’re just creating an execution for the iPhone? None of the other smartphone operating systems? Again, your reach just got smaller.
Now, I don’t want to be a complete pessimist, so I wanted to point you towards two mobile AR executions that I really like. That’s not to say that the issues above don’t still apply. It’s just that if you plan on doing Mobile AR no matter what, these executions conceptually separate themselves from the pack:
1) A “Tower Defense Game” called “ARDefender”. Rather than try to describe it, I’ve embedded a video demo below. Once you watch the video, think about the potential of using product packaging to engage consumers in this way (are you reading this kid’s CPG manufacturers?). The possibilities are pretty exciting…
2) iButterfly. Now admittedly, this is an execution from Japan so we were unable to try it out. But as you’ll see in the video below, the concept is unique, and engaging.
As always, I’d love your to read your thoughts below, or you can contact me directly at twitter.com/jack_benoff
Tags: ARDefender, augmented reality, Augmented Reality Kiosks, Consumer Reach, eMarketer, GPS, iButterfly, InfoWeek, Mashable, Mobile AR
Jack,
Good article– I am glad you pointed out some of the statistically relevant highlights about the industry and the issues of customer reach and technical issues.
With the futurist in me, I struggle to believe that mobile AR will be a viable solution for AR content; both from a consumer perspective, but also from an innovative development perspective. As a consumer, we are slowly getting smaller, more unobtrusive devices to work with– almost to the point where any wire that is attached to us— isn’t really an immersive experience. And from the development perceptive, The limitations (of which you mentioned above) are hardly something a clean running AR app/developer will want to stay within the boundaries of.
As crazy as it sounds, I think AR will truly start to shine when it will be less dependent on a device– when the clothes we wear, the glasses we use, etc. will be able to activate AR content will come to us (rather than the other way around). To me that sounds like the most practical, and most compatible use of AR within our everyday lives.
September 30th, 2010 at 6:37 pmLook-Up augmented reality space game
The Look-Up Experience on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bps3FkX-_cY
October 1st, 2010 at 4:33 amI strongly agree with you on your two main points: 1) Mobile AR AR, and 2) The reach on Mobile AR is insufficient at the moment for most brands. However, I’d hedge a little on both.
1) Mobile AR AR, but some of the tech providers are the same. For instance, Metaio in Germany (@Twitt_AR or @MetaioUS) does Junaio, a sort of mobile AR platform (including zombies!). They ALSO did those great kiosks in the Lego stores. It would be a tiny leap for them to execute the ARdefender demo you posted… for Lego, on mobile, keyed by the box the Lego came in. This leads one to believe that integrated AR campaigns will be the norm, with execution across kiosk, web, and mobile. (OK, OK. I’m still waiting for effective integrated campaigns across web and mobile too, let alone AR ones.)
2) The reach is insufficient currently, but that’s a generalization. Some brands may still find good value: a “find the closest Starbucks/McDonalds/Dunkin Donuts*” app might have good returns, especially if the coordinates can be pre-loaded (or loaded with AJAX-style anticipation as you are moving) rather than on demand. Further, platforms like Layar (@layarmobile) make it possible to execute across multiple smart phone platforms simultaneously and inexpensively.
* Yes, I am based in Boston. At the same time, DD is one of the most innovative interactive advertisers out there.
And Boston already has a Verizon 4G rollout.
So, yes, I agree that in 2010, Mobile AR is not there yet for most brands in most places. But there are some indications that we’ll not have to wait for 2015 either.
October 1st, 2010 at 7:52 amSorry for the munged format. I meant to say “Mobile AR does not equal AR.” Twice.
October 1st, 2010 at 7:54 amTaylor –
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and respond. I definitely agree. AR will be the most powerful, and see the most widespread “adoption” when it’s seamlessly integrated into our lives. That is, when it’s not AR, but rather an experience. The average person could care less about the tech behind something, they just want something that provides value. And for wearable items, it will also have to be fashionable… Sadly, we’re probably 20 years away from having products like the ones you describe see mainstream adoption. Will they be created in university labs and the like before then? yes. But really what matters is when it can be produced in a way that it can change the average persons life… Just one man’s opinion…
- jack
October 1st, 2010 at 9:52 amDan –
Thanks for responding.
1) I definitely am a fan of the work Metaio did for Legos (please remember I said that there was some great work being done with kiosks
). But as for the ARDefender demo I just wanted to point out that I “think” they got 30 frames per second, so it’s not a technologically insignificant achievement. Plus, to create similar types of projects (to ARDefender), it’s all about the idea/story and execution. Not everyone has people good enough to create that type of stuff on staff. It’s harder than it looks…
2) I hear what you’re saying, and in my opinion it sounds good in theory but not in practice. I’ve never seen anyone publish real usage stats for these mobile location focused AR apps. They cite downloads, and visits. But are people coming back and using it repeatedly, or is it a one-off novelty? As I noted above and wrote about in a previous blog post there are serious hardware issues that limit the abilities of these location AR apps to provide a compelling/accurate consumer experience. The PR bump companies get for doing one of these is gone now, as several companies have done it (e.g. Stella Artois) and it’s not “new”. The question is, is holding up your smartphone and looking around to (hopefully) find a restaurant better (for the average consumer) than using your smartphones regular google maps? I’d argue, that day in, day out google is easier and more reliable….
Jack
October 1st, 2010 at 11:07 amHi Jack,
I’m with you on the need for great creative. My point on the Lego kiosks was that the creative was already done… and just needed to be converted to mobile. This is potentially easy. High-performance games — like ARdefender — are indeed difficult, but thoroughly unnecessary for showing Lego trucks riding on the surface of the box.
I’m also with you on the need for metrics. For instance, I’d like to compare the McDonalds “snap a picture off the jumbotron and use as a coupon” thing to a McD’s “badge” for checking in to an AR locater app. I’ve got a hypothesis that the AR one is neither the best nor the worst of the three!
Dan
October 1st, 2010 at 1:34 pmAgreed. It would be awesome if Legos did the mobile intergration. I guess I just love how much more interactive and engaging the ARDefender game is (vs just having a model ride around on a marker). I would think that they could even get away with upselling the app/game for 99 cents or the like too. Or imagine if after a child built something, it had the marker/image contained on the toy itself. Then the child could “open up” and explore a digital world all around whatever they just built…
jack
October 1st, 2010 at 1:44 pmI think bandwidth is less of an issue then people think.
We dont need 4G networks, so much as just intelligence cacheing. The device knows where you are, and should know what channels of information you want to look at….it will even know the speed your moving. Why can’t it just cache in advance when your at hotspots and (if you got a dataplan) download constantly when moving?
Most of the real-time updates people want wont be complex 3d models, but rather annotations no? Just geolocated text? It would probably be considerably lighter then most websites.
Even 56kb modems could manage raw text pretty quickly.
–
We do badly need AR Specs though. Holding a phone up removes a hand from use, and thus makes using AR a lot less practical.
October 17th, 2010 at 4:35 amWith investment I think we could have those glass’s within 5 years; judgeing what companys like Vuzix have now. However, none of the big players are investing in this area so sadly it will probably take a lot longer.
I only hope the Nintendo 3DS’s augmented reality features will push sony to also invest heavily into mobile AR.
[...] the current mobile space, I feel like there are some rather large issues (I blogged about it here: http://weareorganizedchaos.com/i...) currently working against consumer adoption. That said, mobile is obviously the future, especially [...]
January 4th, 2011 at 12:15 pm[...] [...]
January 7th, 2011 at 11:07 amHello there, just doing some browsing for my Boston 4g website. Truly more information that you can imagine on the web. Wasn’t what I was looking for, but nice site. Have a good day.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:06 pm[...] up what we’ve been saying for the last two years — that mobile augmented reality is very overhyped and not ready for prime time. We’ve blogged numerous times about issues and limitations of [...]
January 28th, 2011 at 6:04 pm[...] the past we’ve addressed some of the technical limitations that we see with the mobile augmented reality space in general. In this post, I want to get very specific and address why we don’t currently [...]
October 12th, 2011 at 10:07 am