Microsoft is an industry leader in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) thanks to HoloLens, Windows Mixed Reality and the company’s partnerships for VR headsets. With a single update in iOS 11, however, Apple may be poised to become a legitimate challenger.
In 2015, Microsoft introduced HoloLens, a head-mounted Windows 10 computer that allows wearers to see and interact with holograms that overlay the real world. Windows Mixed Reality (previously called Windows Holographic) is the platform that powers Microsoft’s AR and VR experiences.
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That number doesn’t sound impressive, particularly within the context of the “app-gap-plagued” Windows Store. Those apps, however, were produced from a very small HoloLens developer pool. Microsoft has also been methodic and deliberate with its introduction of HoloLens in specific markets and partnerships. A deluge of apps wouldn’t be expected from this type of strategy of building tailored use cases while still developing the mixed reality platform.
NASA, Stryker, Lowes, Legendary Entertainment, the education sector and the U.S. Military are some entities that have embraced HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality.
Marketing mixed reality matters
According to an internal company memo, Microsoft’s planning a more aggressive and consumer-facing push of Windows Mixed Reality and HoloLens via a dedicated Mixed Reality Marketing team under the direction of Elizabeth Hamren, former CMO of Oculus VR, beginning later this year.
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Apple’s second advantage is its 16 million registered developers. If just 10 percent of them develop AR apps this year, 1.6 million developers will dwarf the mere thousands who’ve made the 150 HoloLens-specific apps. HoloLens is a full Windows 10 computer and can run any Windows program, but the library of HoloLens-specific apps is still (after a year) a mere 150.
Unlike Microsoft’s mixed reality strategy that began in the enterprise, Apple is bringing AR directly to consumers. This approach will certainly build mindshare as developers bring AR games, utilities, social and other AR apps to the App Store.
Imagine an AR chess game overlaid on your kitchen table. Or an AR shopping experience, like the one Microsoft demonstrated with HoloLens where a holographic stool was placed in a room to determine its fit before purchase.
Such real life uses of AR will certainly be brought to market first by Apple, especially because Microsoft has only consumer-facing VR and no AR solutions headed to market in the near future.
The third advantage is that Apple is a master marketer. Microsoft is not.
Microsoft’s AR advantage
Microsoft’s head-mounted AR solution has a major advantage over Apple’s clumsy iPhone-and-iPad-as-an-AR-viewfinder solution. HoloLens allows wearers to naturally and fluidly interact with their environments. Apple’s solution encumbers a user’s hands as they’re forced to hold an iPhone or worse, an iPad, as an unnatural viewfinder for their world. This requirement awkwardly alters one’s interaction with reality.
HoloLens’s gaze tracking technology provide an AR solution without encumbering a user’s hands. His eyes, not his hands, direct where AR artifacts are viewed. With HoloLens users can continue to look at their worlds, but Apple’s solution forces users to look at their devices.
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Source: Windows Central