Major players in the augmented reality (AR) industry have slowed down the development of consumer-end products, and instead have shifted their strategies to focus on developing AR platform products, according to Digitimes Research.
The lackluster performance of AR/VR devices in the consumer market and end market is the main reason for this change, Digitimes Research said. Besides, the existing hand-held devices have been able to deliver AR applications and experiences effectively, making it less urgent for major players to develop other AR end-market devices.
Among these major players, Google has been pioneering the development of AR platform for hand-held devices and has rolled out its Tango platform. On the other hand, Microsoft has been focusing on developing its integrated AR/VR platform, Windows Holographic, which can be utilized by AR/VR end-device users without changing platform.
Facebook has continued to deepen its deployment in community platform, aiming to a build up a premium AR ecosystem with its "Camera Effects" AR platform. Meanwhile, Apple has come out with its ARKit platform, which allows all of iOS users to try on AR experiences without a hardware upgrade.