Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) put augmented reality front and center at the company’s recent annual F8 developer conference. The company did so in order to take on its much smaller, rival, Snap (NYSE:SNAP), and its Snapchat app. Facebook realizes the augmented reality (AR) market is already starting to take off, and there’s no way it’s going to sit this one out.
Similarly, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is looking to get an early start in AR with its HoloLens headset. The device overlays information onto the real world, allowing anyone wearing Hololens to see information, instructions, and graphics, etc., about what they’re looking at.
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IMAGE SOURCE: FACEBOOK.
Still, there are plenty of companies dabbling in augmented reality right now, so why should investors pay any particular attention to the scrappy upstart, the social media giant, and PC software king? Because each is betting that AR will could become a core focus in the near future, and because this market could be worth $117 billion in just five years.
Facebook’s augmented reality realization
At its F8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new Camera Effects platform that developers will be able to use to create effects for the new Facebook camera that the company just launched inside its Facebook app.
Inside of Facebook’s Camera Effects platform, there’s now an AR Studio for developers to create video filters and other effects to images and video. Take a look at this video to see what the company’s doing:
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Unlike Facebook, Snap already has its own glasses, though the company admits that they’re more of a toy than anything else right now. The glasses have an embedded camera and sync with your smartphone so users can easily record what they’re doing without having to whip out their phone. The device shows that Snap isn’t afraid to go down the hardware route, and it knows, just like Zuckerberg has said, that AR’s hardware and software are closely entwined right now.
Snap is still a very young company, with a lot to prove to investors. But the company is already making money from AR by allowing brands to create filters and add them to the app. eMarketer expects Snap will bring in about $1 billion in ad sales this year.
The biggest unknown right now is whether Facebook’s aggressive AR push will hurt Snap’s current progress, or if users see the Snapchat app as something that can coexist alongside of Facebook.
Microsoft’s augmented reality hardware play
Microsoft has been working on AR, or what it calls “mixed reality,” for much longer than Facebook and Snap, but it also has a very different approach. Instead of filters and games (though it uses these, too), the company is focused on building its HoloLens augmented reality headset.
HoloLens is only available to developers right now and costs a hefty $3,000, but if there were ever a device that shows the true potential for AR, HoloLens is likely it. Just take a look at this video:
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Source: Fool