Despite the advantages, Augmented Reality (AR) technology still faces some challenges in growth.
Despite the advantages, Augmented Reality (AR) technology still faces some challenges in growth. According to David Grand, Marketing Manager at Sirea & iAR, the main challenge is the technology itself. At the moment, there are not many options in wearables adapted to an industry with real AR usage.
“Many different big companies had great plans in their
David Grand, Marketing Manager at Sirea & iAR
roadmap years ago, but now, we have no information about these initiatives and the market remains in standby,” Grand said. “Current solutions are not adapted to industry cases, and the main need is in this approach.”
The second challenge that Grand points out is the lack of adaptation of technicians in the use of these technologies. In most cases, technicians are still used to getting information and using a paper-based approach to manage it. A change towards AR use is difficult as not everyone adapts easily. In other words, there is a need for companies to take AR more seriously and technicians to take advantage of its benefits.
Seeing beyond the concept phase
That AR is still considered a nascent technology by many is one of the major reasons for its slow adoption. Lack of awareness on how AR could be beneficial to businesses remains a single major challenge that solution providers need to overcome.
“The most strategic issue related to slow adoption and growth of augmented reality (AR) in any business context is the lack of a clear business strategy,” Mark Troester, VP of Strategy at Progress, said. “In many cases, AR is treated as a pet or lab project that is not driven or aligned properly with a clear business strategy. While lab efforts are certainly good for experimentation, organizations need to move beyond simple experimentation and drive AR efforts based on the desired business outcome.”
It’best to consider and manage AR efforts as products so that you take product management versus a project management approach that is more holistic and addresses non-technology elements like change management.
“On the tactical side, AR efforts can be inhibited by a lack of data, a lack of sensors, or a limitation of mobile or head-mounted display technologies,” Troester continued. “Since this is early days, many organizations lack the design, development and delivery skills necessary to implement, manage and enhance these immersive experiences.”
Need to integrate technology
Speaking specifically about the situation in the retail industry, Steve Curran, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Day 8 Studios said that while AR is ideal at providing a retail-like experience for a consumer at home, consumer behavior at physical retail has not been designed to integrate the mobile device into the shopping experience.
“But that is changing as more digitally native demographics will come to expect these types of engagements and have the spending power to incentivize retailers to adapt to their needs,” Curran added. “There has also been the reliance on app-downloads for consumers to engage in these types of experiences. Consumers have grown weary of downloading apps, so that limits engagement. But that is changing rapidly, as the ability to do AR in the mobile browser is rapidly improving. With the advent of 5G and more advanced AR capabilities of new browser releases, the days of relying on app downloads for AR experiences are numbered.”
In short, the challenges that limit the growth of AR are both technological and business-related. There is an urgent need for more companies to come up with solutions in this field while increasing awareness among customers on the benefits of using AR. A combined effort from solution providers and systems integrations would work well to push this industry forward.