A new Juniper Research report indicates that Augmented Reality (AR) apps in the mobile games market will generate 420 million downloads annually by 2019, up from 30 million in 2014.
The emergence of Head Mounted Devices (HMDs) used in the home, such as Microsoft’s Hololens, will bring a surge in interest for AR games over the next five years. For the time being however, most AR downloads will occur via smartphones and tablets.
By Juniper’s own admission, “the best is yet to come.”
However, all will not be smooth sailing. The new research notes that there had been little traction in the consumer AR market over the past two years.
Juniper cited the lack of compelling cutting-edge apps to captivate consumers, and hence a limited level of interest had been generated in the wider market.
“The app market has stagnated somewhat, with the industry struggling to move beyond AR marketing tools,” says research author Steffen Sorrell. “I do see a shift though – Blippar, for example is moving into visual search, which will open the app to a far wider potential audience.”
