Mobile AR wars – The Apple strikes back

June 2018

The mobile AR platform wars were started by Apple’s Tim Cook’s “ARKit is the largest AR platform in the world”, Google’s Clay Bavor’s aim for ARCore “to take AR mainstream”, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s “making the camera the first augmented reality platform” and Evan Spiegel’s Snap being a “camera company”. But those were just shots across the bows.

Since 2015 we’ve said that Apple could own AR long-term, particularly the premium end of mobile AR. But if the mobile AR war has seemed a civilized affair so far, Apple’s AR announcements at WWDC were laser guided cruise-missiles carrying multiple warheads aimed at Apple’s major AR competitors.

To understand what Apple’s new initiatives could mean for Facebook, Snap, Google, Tencent, Amazon and Alibaba, let’s start with the AR components of Apple’s hardware roadmap we forecast in coming years:

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China could beat America in AR/VR/XR long-term

May 2018

America delivered more AR/VR revenue than China last year, but Chinese growth in the next 5 years could see it dominate AR/VR long-term – and not by a small margin. Digi-Capital’s new Augmented/Virtual Reality Report Q2 2018 shows that China has the potential to take more than $1 of every $5 spent on AR/VR globally by 2022. The natural advantages of the Chinese AR/VR market are a golden opportunity (or threat) for domestic and international players. Combine China with other major countries in the region, and Asia could deliver around half of AR/VR global revenue in 5 years’ time. Western companies might need to adopt a “we try harder” approach to compete at the same level.

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Google and Digi-Capital announce Reality Network for AR/VR/XR Leaders

April 2018

Digi-Capital is partnering with Google to host its next Reality Network on Tuesday, May 29th at Google in Mountain View. Reality Network is by invitation only for AR/VR/XR CEOs, corporate VPs, and VC Partners, with numbers limited to keep the signal to noise ratio high. The focus of this Reality Network is on AR/VR/XR Leaders making money and how they’re doing it (appstore premium and IAP, eCommerce, hardware, adspend, enterprise, location based, video, games), as well as industry-wide opportunities and deals (commercial deals, partnerships, investments, M&As). Reality Network is about getting deals done, not a talking shop.

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Tencent dominated $22 billion games deals market in last 12 months

April 2018

In games deal making there’s Tencent, then there’s everyone else. Tencent led or participated in over $4 of every $10 invested in games companies worldwide in the last 12 months to Q1 2018. It was involved either sell-side or buy-side in over three-quarters of all games M&A deal value (i.e. dollars) in the same period. And this is in the context of record totals (not just Tencent) over $2.1 billion games investment and over $14.4 billion games M&A in the first quarter of this year alone. Digi-Capital’s new Games Report and Deals Database Q2 2018 tracked a total of nearly $22 billion total games market investments and M&As (again not just Tencent) in the last 12 months, as well as forecasting global games software/hardware market revenue to top $165 billion this year and over $230 billion by 2022. Let’s dive into the detail to see what’s behind the numbers.

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Computer vision leader Cubic Motion appoints Digi-Capital Managing Director Tim Merel to Advisory Board

April 2018

Cubic Motion, the world leader in real-time model-based computer vision and facial animation, has appointed AR/VR adviser Digi-Capital‘s Managing Director Tim Merel to its Advisory Board. As well as being a global thought leader for augmented reality, virtual reality and computer vision/machine learning, Digi-Capital provides AR/VR reports/tools, company networking, strategy consulting and investment banking. Tim is a software engineer, investment banker, lawyer and founder, and one of the most connected people across the AR/VR industry at CEO level globally. He writes regularly for TechCrunch and others on AR/VR, and is frequently interviewed and quoted in TV, radio, digital media and print internationally.

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