Qualcomm has scored a major contract, with Meta tapping the firm to create its virtual reality (VR) chips.
Meta is going all-in on the metaverse, running TV ads and working to convince customers and companies that they should buy into its vision of what the metaverse should be. In order to take advantage of the metaverse, however, people still need headsets and equipment — equipment which will be powered by custom chips Qualcomm will be making for the social media giant.
The two companies have “announced a multi-year agreement to collaborate on a new era of spatial computing powered by Snapdragon extended reality (XR) platforms and technologies for the Meta Quest platform.”
The new agreement builds on a seven-year history of collaboration between the two companies.
“By partnering with Meta, we are bringing together two of the world’s metaverse leaders to revolutionize the future of computing for billions of people in the coming years,” said Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive officer, Qualcomm Incorporated. “Building off our joint leadership in XR, this agreement will allow our companies to deliver best-in-class devices and experiences to transform how we work, play, learn, create and connect in a fully realized metaverse.”
“We’re working with Qualcomm Technologies on customized virtual reality chipsets — powered by Snapdragon XR platforms and technology — for our future roadmap of Quest products,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Meta. “As we continue to build more advanced capabilities and experiences for virtual and augmented reality, it has become more important to build specialized technologies to power our future VR headsets and other devices. Unlike mobile phones, building virtual reality brings novel, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor. These chipsets will help us keep pushing virtual reality to its limits and deliver awesome experiences.”
Verizon and Mastercard are partnering to bring the benefits of 5G to the payments industry.
5G stands poised to revolutionize numerous industries, not the least of which is the financial sector. Like most carriers, Verizon has been moving ahead at full-speed in its efforts to deploy its 5G network.
The two companies plan to use 5G to help “drive transformational solutions for the global payments and commerce ecosystem.” The next-gen wireless technology will help revolutionize new areas of the commerce industry, including contactless payments and autonomous checkout.
In particular, the two companies’ efforts will help advance the use of smartphones for making and accepting payments, providing touchless retail experiences, VR/AR shopping and creating new ways to consume digital content.
“Business needs and consumer demands constantly fluctuate. Critical components of long-term success are the ability to remain agile and align with strategic financial and payments partners that have the tools and capabilities to drive industries forward,” said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, CRO, Verizon Business. “Coupling Verizon’s leading global IP network and transformative 5G technology with Mastercard’s deep industry expertise, leading services and solutions, and a strong commitment to innovate, is a partnership that aligns perfectly with what we are striving to achieve at Verizon and one that can create game-changing solutions.”
Verizon and Dreamscape have announced a partnership to deliver 5G-based virtual reality (VR) innovations.
Dreamscape is one of the leading VR companies, and helped pioneer multi-person, real-time VR. VR is one of the industries that stands to benefit the most from 5G, as the wireless technology can deliver the speeds and low-latency necessary to create immersive, fluid experiences.
Verizon and Dreamscape’s partnership will initially focus on using 5G and mobile edge computing (MEC) to create immersive-learning and training experiences.
“Verizon’s partnership with Dreamscape shows how innovative tech built on our 5G network can revolutionize industries,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “Using 5G and Edge computing, we are creating immensely powerful and complex VR experiences using lower-cost, tetherless VR hardware, and advancing VR education and training simulations beyond what was previously thought possible. This opens the door to new experiences and makes VR training more accessible for students, trainees, and professionals.”
“Dreamscape is founded on the premise that we can think beyond physical limitations to create new ways for our world to learn, play, and work. With Verizon as our partner, we’re able to push the limits of VR. Together, we’ll set the standard for VR innovation and application in every field,” said Walter Parkes, CEO of Dreamscape.
Verizon has announced it is partnering with Unity to help drive 5G-powered digital experiences and mobile edge computing (MEC).
5G is the next generation of wireless technology that promises revolutionary speeds, opening up a whole new world of digital possibilities. Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), gaming, autonomous driving and much more all benefit from the speeds 5G can provide. Edge computing and MEC is another area where 5G can make a big difference, allowing data to be processed faster at or near the point of collection.
Verizon has been investing heavily in its 5G network. Until recently, it had primarily focused on the fastest variety of 5G, the high-band mmWave, which Verizon calls Ultra Wideband. The company has also spent big at the FCC auction for coveted mid-band spectrum, often considered the sweet spot for 5G, offering a good combination of speed and coverage.
Unity, on the other hand, is the maker of the popular Unity game engine, as well as the creator of the popular Fortnite game. Unity’s engine is also one of the leading VR platforms. This portfolio makes Unity a natural choice for Verizon to partner with to provide 5G content.
“We are entering an era of technology-led disruption where 5G and MEC will not only transform the full enterprise lifecycle, it will change the way consumers experience gaming and entertainment,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “Every business is accelerating the shift to digital for their employees, supply chain or end-customer experience. So whether you’re an enterprise reimaging how you do business using predictive real time insights, computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence, or a mobile gamer who simply wants to download the hottest new game in seconds and enjoy data intensive, multiplayer games conventionally reserved for consoles, the future is happening right now.”
“We know the world is demanding high-speed, AAA content, whether it’s an educational augmented reality application or a robot running a simulation of a digital twin,” said Ryan Peterson, VP, Solutions, at Unity. “5G is the key piece for us to facilitate these real-time 3D experiences broadly and to better meet the demands of the real-time economy.”
This partnership further illustrates the emphasis wireless companies are placing on providing content that aligns with their core business. In October, T-Mobile announced TVision, its foray into streaming TV. Similarly, AT&T has its own streaming service. In an industry known for its churn — where customers switch from one company to another — providing high-quality digital experiences may play a big role in increasing brand loyalty.
Facebook is accepting applications for a closed beta test of its Horizon virtual reality (VR) environment.
Horizon is the company’s attempt to merge social media with VR. Horizon offers “an ever-expanding VR world where you can explore, play, and create in extraordinary ways.” The environment is designed to grow with the creations and contributions of its inhabitants.
In addition to contributing to the environment’s growth, the social aspect comes into play in the form of competition, as well as teamwork. Participants can engage in 1v1 contests, or work together to accomplish goals.
It’s obvious that Facebook is trying to establish a positive culture right off the bat, and avoid the toxic culture that has plagued many social media platforms. The company defines a Horizon citizen as someone who “is friendly, inclusive, and curious. They are open to new adventures and take advantage of the limitless possibilities of this world. There are many ways to play and create here – and Horizon citizens are enthusiastic of the countless kinds of fun to explore.” Horizon will also offer “Locals,” community guides whose job it is to welcome users and assist them in their endeavors.
With Horizon scheduled for release on the Oculus Quest and the Rift Platform in 2020, Facebook is accepting applications for closed beta and encourages users to sign up.
Verizon Business and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are teaming up to deliver 5G applications.
The PNNL tackles some of the world’s biggest challenges, including energy efficiency, scientific discovery and national security. To aid in that goal, Verizon will be deploying its 5G Ultra Wideband at the PNNL’s Richmond, Washington facility. Together, the organizations will develop 5G applications for use in everything, ranging from first responders to chemistry to earth sciences research.
Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband promises speeds measured in gigabits rather than megabits, along with sub-millisecond lag. That performance will open a world of new possibilities for PNNL, as it researches artificial intelligence, machine learning, AR/VR and more.
“With Verizon, we plan to explore how cybersecurity will underpin 5G for critical infrastructure and how 5G will drive transformation in the protection of endpoint devices, advancement of artificial intelligence, the science behind autonomous systems and related internet of things applications,” said Scott Godwin, general manager of Corporate Partnerships & Alliances at PNNL. “This partnership fits squarely with PNNL’s commitment to explore the capability of new science and technology to further safety and security worldwide.”
“Our 5G Ultra Wideband network is built to support transformational innovations and solutions across all industries,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “There’s no doubt 5G’s increased data bandwidth and super-low lag will help play a critical role in evolving response connectivity and mission operations for first responders. We’ve seen exciting use cases come out of our 5G First Responder Lab and are thrilled to see the new applications that will arise from our work with PNNL.”
Robin Hood is about to come to life as Sherwood Forest becomes the world’s first 5G Connected Forest.
A £10m project has been approved to use a combination of 5G, virtual and augmented reality to create an immersive experience in Sherwood Forest. The investment consists of £5 million from the government, matched by a consortium led by Nottinghamshire County Council.
The technology will be used for both tourism and environmental needs, with Robin Hood brought “to life at the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre via an incredible 3D/4D virtual reality experience.” Meanwhile, the technology will also be used to power robots and drones to help monitor the health of the forest while minimizing environmental impact.
“Nottinghamshire is once again at the forefront of latest technology, bringing together some of the best academic minds, 3D creators and experts in 5G,” said Nottinghamshire County Council leader, Councillor Kay Cutts.
“This will be the world’s first testing, of 5G, in a forest. It will bring the stories associated with Robin Hood and our ancient woodland to life in a new way.
“Together with our partners, we will create a virtual reality experience for visitors to Sherwood Forest to attract even more families and visitors to Nottinghamshire from across the UK and overseas, bringing benefits to local businesses and our economy.”
While the concept is interesting, this announcement seems to fit into the “just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be” category. In an era when experts are encouraging people to unplug and enjoy nature, it seems odd to be going to this length to wire nature. There’s something equally disturbing about seeing children in the forest with VR gear strapped to their heads.
The opening statement of the Nottinghamshire County Council’s announcement says “visitors to the Sherwood Forest Country Park will be able to get a 3D experience of the forest like never before.”
This writer, for one, has always been under the impression that “a 3D experience of the forest” could be achieved by simply taking a walk in one.
“We started the rollout to all of the Walmart retail environments at the end of 2019 and so far so good,” says STRIVR CEO Derek Belch. “We’ve had almost a million Associates go through different training modules. Doug McMillon actually in their earnings report a month ago did reference employee training as being one of the reasons that their earnings are what they are. So it’s definitely something that we’re seeing have a very positive effect as it relates to placing employees in these simulation-based learning environments that virtual reality affords.”
Derek Belch, founder and CEO of STRIVR, discusses the success that enterprise companies such as Walmart, Verizon, and BMW are having with their virtual reality employee training technology in an interview on CNBC:
Walmart VR Training Positively Impacting Earnings
We started the rollout to all of the Walmart retail environments at the end of 2019 and so far so good. We’ve had almost a million Associates go through different training modules. Doug McMillon actually in their earnings report a month ago did reference employee training as being one of the reasons that their earnings are what they are. So it’s definitely something that we’re seeing have a very positive effect as it relates to placing employees in these simulation-based learning environments that virtual reality affords. It’s been really cool.
Walmart VR Training – Oculus x Walmart x STRIVR
We have about 30 customers in the Fortune 500 right now. It’s definitely crossing the chasm. We’re still on our way up here in the early adopters’ phase but we’re seeing this catch on. There’s definitely product-market fit for immersive learning as we call it. This is the real deal. This is very similar to pilots in a flight simulator. Historically, we’ve trained employees or we’ve assessed employees via PowerPoint’s, videos, and lectures. Candidly, we don’t know if people are half asleep or if they’re actually engaged.
Now with virtual reality, we’re able to put people through simulation-based learning, simulation-based training, simulation-based assessment, and it’s catching on. I think by this time next year if you’re not doing something (with VR training) you’re behind in the Fortune 500. We’re seeing that this is the real deal.
VR Technology Finding Its Legs As a Useful Tool In the Enterprise
At this point, we’ve talked to everybody. There isn’t a company in the Fortune 500 that we have not talked to in some way, shape, or form. We are not working with Amazon currently. We have talked to them on and off and we’ll see where that goes. To be honest, I’m not really worried about anyone doing this themselves. This is still the very early days of virtual reality. We work very closely with Oculus, which is owned by Facebook, they’re a great partner of ours.
We take a lot of pride at STRIVR and what we call the end-to-end solution which is basically, hey, in the early days while you’re an early adopter and the technology is certainly viable and ready it’s also really difficult to scale. So we do a lot of heavy lifting for our partners, Walmart being one of them along with Verizon and BMW. We just do a lot of work for them up front while the technology is finding its legs to get to the point where computers, iPads, and cell phones are right now as a useful tool in the enterprise. I’m not worried about anybody in the next 18 months or so doing this on their own but certainly, we’ll see as the ecosystem evolves where it goes from there.
STRIVR VR Technology Being Used by Verizon
As it relates to the viability of using this as a predictive tool, this is how the Walmart use case came about with using this for assessments. Were actually patent pending right now on what we call an engagement algorithm to see how engaged somebody is during a simulation. We tell our partners all the things we’re working on behind the scenes and Walmart said they wanted to test that out to see if this would be a good use case for them.
We Take Pride That Our VR Experiences Won’t Lead To Nausea
This (disorientation) is an issue for sure. That question always comes up in every demo. “Hey, am I going to get sick? Oh, I’m good, I don’t need to put it on. I got sick last time.” This is all about how the brain works and your equilibrium. If you’re sitting or you’re standing and you put on a headset and now you’re on a rollercoaster or you’re running through an active shooter game or something like that, yeah you’re going to get nauseous because your body is static but your brain thinks that it’s doing something else.
We take a lot of pride in making sure that the experiences we build along with some of the subtle things we do in the software aren’t going to lead to nausea.
Walmart, Verizon, BMW Having Success With Virtual Reality Training Technology – STRIVR CEO Derek Belch
Watching sports may never be the same if a demo by telecommunications company Optus is any indication.
ZDNet is reporting on a demonstration Optus put on at its headquarters in Sydney, in partnership with mixed reality firm Unbnd, combining the power of mixed reality and 5G. Mixed reality (MR) is the term that covers both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
According to ZDNet, in the presentation Optus and Unbnd demonstrated “a 360-degree ‘virtual theatre’ that allows viewers to experience National Basketball Association (NBA) content in either 2D or 3D, such as live games and replays, while also providing access to additional mixed reality information like scores and statistics, as well as the ability to buy NBA products such as basketball jerseys.”
The technology could eventually allow viewers to watch and essentially ‘participate’ in sports that would otherwise be too dangerous for the average person. As an example, according to ZDNet, the demo “showcased an immersive sportscar racing experience which was streamed to a 5G-capable handset. In that mixed-reality experience, viewers could see three 4K video streams concurrently — ranging from driver POV streams to the main race coverage — in addition to real-time statistics such as the positions of race cars on the track map and the speed of each driver that are tracked by Internet of Things sensors.”
Optus and Unbnd’s demo is an amazing example of what’s yet to come as 5G is paired with other revolutionary technologies, such as MR.
At an event in Ireland, where he was presented with an award to recognize “the company’s contribution to FDI in Ireland,” CEO Tim Cook took the opportunity to share his vision of augmented reality’s (AR) future, according to Silicon Republic.
“I’m excited about AR,” said Cook. “My view is it’s the next big thing, and it will pervade our entire lives.”
One significant area where AR differs from virtual reality (VR) is the potential for human interaction. VR tends to segregate individuals in their own virtual environment. Any interaction with other humans depends on them having access to VR equipment and being part of the same virtual environment. AR, on the other hand, is not as exclusionary.
“I think it’s something that doesn’t isolate people,” Cook continued. “We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I’ve always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies.”
Cook also sees the technology being used to help people perform hands-on tasks, especially ones they may not be familiar with. He used the example of changing the oil on a vehicle as the kind of task AR could help with.
Apple has made no secret of their faith in AR, even over its more buzz-generating sibling VR. The company has integrated AR into its visitor experience at the Apple Park, and both iPhones and iPads currently support AR. Cook’s comments give a small glimpse into why the company is so bullish about the tech.
“Happy cows come from California” was the tagline of a popular commercial advertising the California dairy industry. If news out of Moscow is any indication, however, California may have some competition.
Studies have shown that happy cows produce more milk and produce more nutritious milk. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region decided to take it a step further and conducted a study to see what impact virtual reality (VR) would have on cows.
The VR equipment was modified to fit the shape of a cow’s head, and the color spectrum was customized to match their eyesight, specifically the range of colors they see best. VR architects then created a program that simulated a summer field, rather than the confines of a dairy farm.
The initial test was successful in decreasing the cows’ anxiety and increasing their overall emotional mood. Further studies will determine if the emotional changes result in more milk production or higher quality milk.
Whatever the subsequent findings, there can be no doubt this is one of the more interesting use cases for VR and goes to illustrate the untapped potential of the technology to disrupt a wide range of industries.
John Carmack is a legend in the video game community, having co-founded id Software and taken the lead on ground-breaking games such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Rage and others. More recently, he has held the role of CTO at Oculus VR.
Now, in a Facebook post, Carmack has announced he is resigning his position to pursue AI research. He plans on being a “consulting CTO” for Oculus, but only in a modest role.
“Starting this week, I’m moving to a ‘Consulting CTO’ position with Oculus.
“I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time.
“As for what I am going to be doing with the rest of my time: When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague ‘line of sight’ to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven. I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old.
“I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI).
“I think it is possible, enormously valuable, and that I have a non-negligible chance of making a difference there, so by a Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic, I should be working on it.
“For the time being at least, I am going to be going about it ‘Victorian Gentleman Scientist’ style, pursuing my inquiries from home, and drafting my son into the work.
Runner up for next project was cost effective nuclear fission reactors, which wouldn’t have been as suitable for that style of work. 😊”
If Carmack’s new focus has even a fraction of the success he’s enjoyed in the gaming industry, the AI field will likely reap significant benefits from his participation.
The co-founder & CEO of augmented reality platform company Blippar, Ambarish Mitra, told an audience at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal that within 5-7 years AR will be as ubiquitous as the Internet itself.
When you see the world with your eyes and through the eyes of a camera and something is recognized for the camera and you see some content that appears in the field of view, that is augmented reality. It is the enhancement of reality. Do not confuse it with virtual reality. Virtual reality has almost nothing to do with your immediate reality, it’s almost like escaping from reality.
It’s important to note why this industry is really relevant. Computers themselves are continuously evolving. You can see in the very early days it was all about the touchpad and the keyboard and it wasn’t a very natural behavior. Then the whole AI wave came along. What’s the role of AI? Besides artificial intelligence, I always call it IA, which is intelligent assistance. It’s here to serve us. We are not here to serve the AI.
Then touch, which is a very human function, touch computing came into play. In 2010 we saw the first birth of natural language processing. We humans talk and we want the computers to talk back at us. Then the final frontier which is vision. Vision is very important because vision is a large part of what makes us human. A lot of our cognition growing up comes from this sense which we call eyesight. Computers will one day, and beginning to already, will see and understand the world. Computer vision is very relevant.
AI and AR are Deeply Linked
We are already starting to see how computers are beginning to understand. It’s a very important branch of artificial intelligence and in a way augmented reality and AI has been positioned as very separate industries, but they’re very deeply linked. Augmented reality cannot scale until computers understand reality. It’s not just about gimmicky dinosaurs walking down a path. At one point we will see almost the entire Internet transform into an AR medium where everything in the field of view could come to life. It’s very relevant. You may not realize that even though the history of the Internet has been very words driven where you type some words and you get a response, but there are so many so many things in your everyday life which you cannot describe with words.
The next generation of computing is massively going to be vision based. AR promises to be a very lucrative industry because it is connected to the world we see and also a lot more possibilities with devices. Almost everybody has some form of an AR device because you have a camera on your phone. VR is an incredible and equally promising industry but still is a slightly niche utility because of how it moves you away from scaling or moving around the wider world.
This is the famous Gartner hype cycle which it has been applied to augmented reality as well. We started Blippar literally when it was in the very very earth early stages innovation trigger. We’ve actually been through the whole peak of inflicted expectations. We’ve raised a bunch of money and now it’s reaching a point where AR is under the scrutiny of whether it is going to deliver on its true potential.
AR Will Be as Ubiquitous as the Internet
The timing is great, five of the world’s biggest companies, not just in tech but the most valuable companies have invested in augmented reality. We are predicting that from five to seven years down the line it is really ready to be comparable and as ubiquitous as the Internet is today.
Facebook has launched an ad-based platform on AR. Snapchat has the famous face filters and of course, now Google with ARCore and Apple with ARKit are supporting the medium and making their phones compatible with it. So we believe AR is already having a positive impact.
About Blippar
Blippar is a seven-year-old British company operating out of Silicon Valley, New York, and London. Our mission was to create this ubiquitous AR platform which works on any camera device and brings the world to life. It’s been incredible the last two years with several large players coming into AR. It’s really validated the space.
Most virtual reality products are aimed at gamers because there is an automatically understood natural fit. Can VR move beyond gaming? Oculus executive produce of experiences at Oculus offers her insights.
Yelena Rachitsky, Executive Producer, Experiences at Oculus, a virtual reality technology company owned by Facebook, was recently interviewed by TechCrunch writer Lucus Matney:
It’s Not Just About Content, Technology is Making it Easier
We’re focusing a lot more on more highly interactive content and marrying concepts that were understanding from gaming into more narrative approaches. Instead of shooters and strategy, how do we use these mechanics of understanding on how our body works, natural intuitive mechanics to create pieces that people actually want to come back to, pieces people actually enjoy and don’t feel like they are playing a game necessarily.
So we’re marrying that knowledge also with the form factors, I think a few people have mentioned Quest which is something we’re super excited about, so it’s not just the content it’s also the technology that’s coming and making it easier.
Technology is Also Working to Make Things More Intuitive
A lot of technology is also working just to make things much more intuitive. It’s a combination of how we’re approaching content being more compelling, more intuitive, more interactive, more emotional, with the form factors in the hardware. The thing I’m really interested in is how we approach experiences that have very more natural intuitive interactions versus a lot of button pressing.
I gave this talk at Oculus Connect recently about embodiment and what makes us feel like something’s ours when they connect with an object and there’s this reality, our Facebook Reality Labs research talks about something called object believability, and we really believe that we’re picking up an object if it’s something that we recognize that we’ve done in the real world.
The Hard Part of VR is That We Are Holding Controllers
The hard part about VR is that we’re actually holding controllers in our hands. So how do you make your brain believe that you’re actually picking up those objects? People have approached this in different ways. With Job Simulator (by Oculus) you have big hands that you press with really really big buttons. There’s something very rewarding about that. Then there’s a game that the studios’ team did called Lone Echo which they put a lot of effort into how the hands formed themselves around objects because if you’re seeing your hands actually shift in the way that they should in real life your brain believes that and it becomes super rewarding.
With a lot of the projects we’re creating we’re still experimenting, we still don’t know a lot of this stuff, but we’re going all the way from fully interactive to still slightly linear. There’s not a magic formula to it, everything’s just about the intent that you want to create and then all the tools that you use for VR that push forward that intent.
Facebook has launched new tools in their analytics suite to help businesses using their platform to better convert visitors into customers or subscribers. At F8, Facebook’s developer conference, the company announced Journeys from Facebook Analytics that anonymously aggregates data from visitors to inform businesses on patterns that lead (or don’t lead) to sales and conversions.
“For example, you may find the people most likely to convert first browse your website on mobile before ultimately making a purchase on desktop,” Facebook noted. “Or maybe, the people who interact with your business on Messenger ultimately spend more in your mobile app. You can then use these insights to optimize your marketing strategy and grow your business.”
To make it work a business would simply add custom parameters to their events in Facebook Analytics enabling them to automatically receive key user insights. One of the ways to do this is via funnel conversion insights, which will provide key data on where in the process visitors tend to convert or go away.
VR Now Available for Brands Using Facebook Messenger
Since Facebook’s opened the Messenger Platform in 2016 to businesses and developers it has become a critical customer interaction tool for many brands. Facebook noted at F8 that there are over 8 billion messages exchanged between people and businesses each month on the platform. That is 4x more than last year and signifies widespread adoption of Messenger by businesses of all sizes including some of the largest brands.
At F8 Facebook announced that the Messenger Platform now includes the ability for brands to integrate custom uses of augmented reality into their Messenger experience. “With this launch, businesses large and small can leverage the Camera Effects Platform to easily integrate AR into their Messenger experience, bringing the virtual and physical worlds one step closer together,” says David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook. “So, when a person interacts with your business in Messenger, you can prompt them to open the camera, which will be pre-populated with filters and AR effects that are specific to your brand. From there, people can share the image or video to their story or in a group or one-to conversation or they can simply save it to their camera roll.”
The value for marketers is that they can incorporate better visualizations of their products. This is especially important to brands that have products that customers feel more comfortable buying after touching, seeing up close or trying on, such as apparel. Facebook announced that ASUS,Kia, Nike, and Sephora will be including AR effects in their Messenger experience soon.
If you are interested in using these new AR effecting in Messenger you can sign up for their waitlist.
Facebook Enters the Dating Business
Also at F8, Mark Zuckerberg announced “Dating,” a new service by Facebook. It will let users create a second profile that is specifically for the purpose of introductions to others that they might want to date or hook up with. The key here is that your friends on Facebook won’t be able to see your other profile and they also will not show up as potential matches. This will hopefully eliminate the awkward situation where somebody uses their Facebook friendship as a vehicle to hitting on another person, which in the past often led to unfriending.
Facebook’s dating algorithm will use various signals to determine potential matches including if two people are attending the same Event or are a member of the same Group. You can assume that your bio info, likes and geography will play leading roles in making potential romantic matchups as well.
Not everyone is impressed by Facebook’s foray into dating:
Tonight at 11/10c, Facebook is getting into the dating game…minus the hookups. pic.twitter.com/Bqaa3BlJAO
Google shared a story today on their Education Blog about their efforts to use their virtual reality in a box solution, Google Cardboard, to demonstrate diversity and gay lifestyles to students across the world.
“Earlier this year, we launched #prideforeveryone, a global virtual reality Pride parade that anyone, anywhere could join,” said the Editor of Google’s Education Blog. “Since then, we’ve distributed Google Cardboard and the virtual Pride experience to more than 20 groups and nonprofits, worldwide.”
He added, “This is the story of Alba Reyes, founder of the Sergio Urrego Foundation, who brought the parade to students in Bogota, Colombia.”
“In 2014, my son Sergio took his own life because he was suspended and discriminated by his school for kissing another boy. Unfortunately, neither I nor his friends were able to prevent the harassment and isolation he felt.
Since then, I’ve made it my mission to make sure what happened to Sergio doesn’t happen to any other young person in my country. I started the Fundacion Sergio Urrego to travel to schools across Colombia and lead inclusion workshops with local students. Although LGBTQ children may be more likely to feel isolated, many young people don’t feel accepted by their families, friends or teachers. My workshops create activities and safe spaces that help students understand how it feels to be discriminated against – reinforcing the importance of diversity and inclusion.
An important part of these workshops is helping students put themselves in another person’s shoes. This summer, we used Google Cardboard to give students in my workshops a way to experience Pride parades from across the globe. Most of these students have never seen a LGBTQ Pride parade. But with virtual reality, they can learn more about the global LGBT community, and feel supported by a global community that celebrates diversity.
After seeing the impact of my workshop and virtual Pride parade on children in Colombia, institutions like the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies have have showed their support to scale my workshops to even more children across the country.
My fight is not just for my child. It’s for all children who have endured discrimination and bullying from their peers, teachers and community.”
Facebook has announced that the highly anticipated Oculus Touch VR Controllers are now available for purchase. Touch allows you to use your hand gestures intuitively within the virtual world, making for a much more immersive experience.
Facebook is also releasing 54 games and experiences today, each designed to make immersion and social interaction more authentic and to give users a reason to order the new Oculus Touch.
They say it’s different by design:
Thanks to Touch’s intuitive and ergonomic design, you forget the controllers and feel like your physical and virtual hands are identical.
Precise tracking and ergonomic handle design work in tandem to bring hand poses and social gestures into VR for a more immersive experience. The diagonal rather than vertical grip lets your thumb and index finger move autonomously, which helps prevent accidental triggers and puts you in control. Thanks to balanced weight distribution, Touch feels natural in your hand so you can relax and enjoy the virtual world.
Hand presence opens up new opportunities to interact with others while experiencing VR—and this is just the first step. We can’t wait to see the next wave of immersive content made possible with Touch.
— The Oculus Team
What people are saying…
“I got mine yesterday, its money well spent, its far better than I imagined it could be,” said David Batty, a Director at Code College, his own startup. “The first contact demo is excellent as an intro to it.”
“You people are doin gods work,” says Daron Thomas. While Nanci Schwartz says, “I’m not sure what planet I’m on anymore. OMG.”
Mark Zuckerberg says that virtual reality will be the most social platform that ever existed. Zuckerberg hosted an in-person Q&A in Rome, Italy Friday when he focused in on virtual reality when asked if Facebook change our lives as much as Pokemon Go. “The real reason I came to Rome was to find some rare Pokemon,” Zuckerberg replied. “In all seriousness, I think that virtual reality and augmented reality are going to be the most social platform that has ever existed.”
Last year Facebook paid $2 billion for crowd-funded Oculus Rift in order to enter the space running. “Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible,” proclaimed Zuckerberg when announcing this acquisition. “Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.”
Clearly, Zuckerberg sees VR as a huge boon for social but even more for advertising where it is believed to have great potential. According to research by Digi-Capital augmented reality and Virtual Reality are predicted to be a $150 billion industry by 2020. That’s why so many companies are focusing on VR and AR including Google.
“This is why advertisers are so interested in VR,” said Aaron Luber who is in charge of Google and YouTube partnerships. “Emotion sells products much more than utility and that reality positions Virtual Reality as a game changer in the advertising industry.”
Facebook recently bought another small VR startup called Two Big Ears, which helps bring an immersive audio experience into VR and AR. Facebook is calling it the Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation which can be downloaded for free.
“If you think about the history of computing every 10 or 15 years a big new computing platform comes along,” Zuckerberg added. “We had desktop computers, then browsers and the internet, now we have mobile phones and each one is better than the one before it, but what we have now is not the end of the line. We are going to get to a point in 5-10 years that we are all using augmented or virtual reality.”
Zuckerberg explained how virtual reality makes you feel like you are really there or “present” as he put it. “If you look at a photo or a video on a screen, TV, computer or phone and you are trying to get your mind set in this perspective as if you were there,” he said. “You see the photo and you are trying to imagine what it’s like to be there. Virtual reality is different, because it’s programmed to work exactly the way that your brain does. When you look at it you feel like you are in that place, like you are present and you are trying to convince yourself that you aren’t actually there because if you look around what you are seeing feels like the real world.”
He sees a future that is vastly improved socially because VR will make the social experience feel like reality. “You can imagine in the future you are going to feel like you are right there with another person who couldn’t actually be with you,” says Zuckerberg. “I think about my family when I’m not there such as my daughter who is in California right now. I miss her and to really feel like I am there right now would be a really powerful experience that I would want to have.”
He noted the differences between virtual reality where you feel completely immersed and augmented reality where you are adding virtual elements onto the world. Zuckerberg predicts that AR will come to mobile phones first “before we get some kind of smart glasses that overlay stuff on the world.” He says that we going to see more apps like Pokemon Go and that Facebook itself tested a form of AR with its Masquerade Filter that was test launched at the Olympics in Brazil and in Canada, where people could support their country by putting face paint on.
“I feel there are going to be a bunch of tools like that overlay real things from the world on top of your experience and help you share things that we are going to see soon,” says Zuckerberg.
“360 is a video format that unlike traditional video, is capturing in full 360, so full spherical,” commented Kurt Wilms, Senior Product Manager at YouTube. “When we talk about 360 at YouTube, we’re talking about filming content and viewing content in this new video format.”
“VR at YouTube is all about how viewers are experiencing this,” Wilms said. “VR means you’re watching the content in a specialized headset that allows for really immersive viewing and really transports you in a way that isn’t possible if you’re watching on your phone or on your desktop computer.”
YouTube has developed a special camera to create 360-degree videos:
“360 video as a format has been out for a while but up until recently, people haven’t had a great way to consume in a way that was immersive,” noted Bryce Reid, a User Experience Designer for YouTube. “What I’m really excited about is now that we have all these new technologies for viewing the content, it can really transport people. So I don’t think of it as using a camera to create a scene, I think of it as like a personal teleporter where you can send people to a new place. And that’s really exciting.”
“Telling traditional stories but putting a new spin on them with 360 is something that all creators should be thinking about across all content verticals,” says Wilms.
“When I’m filming in 360, I try to place myself inside that camera,” says Reid. “I want to make sure that the scene that I’m telling captures their attention and focuses them in the direction that I want them to be looking, rather than aiming. So if you really want someone to look that way, do something over there and then that will gather some people’s attention.”
“Whether it’s up down, left or right and really the viewers feeling like they’re present there, they’re actually in the film maker’s shoes.” says Wilms.
“There aren’t do’s or don’ts yet and I think that we’re looking for creators to define that,” said Reid. “We know that there’s some basic rules about comfort, like you know, don’t spin people around and make them sick but other than that, it’s really wide open.”
“Getting started with 360 is actually really easy,” Wilms said. “You can go out and buy a camera, consumer grade cameras that aren’t very expensive. They integrate with YouTube. You can start filming immediately and upload your content directly to YouTube and start exploring and filming and seeing what works and what doesn’t for your content. Viewers with a mobile phone, with a desktop computer, with a smart TV will be able to watch your content without any special hardware and really allow viewers to experience things like they’ve never experienced before.”
“360 is best when you want someone to be really close to something and to feel like they were there,” commented Reid. “To form a memory of it. It’s not really like a thing that I watched, it’s a place I was at.”
“One of recent examples is creators are starting to use 360 to live stream,” says Wilms. “Doing things like putting a 360 camera on a red carpet at an award show to give viewers a whole new perspective and watch things live like they never could before.”
“I’m really excited to see all of the traditional things applied to VR and applied to spherical video and see what sticks,” said Reid. “We really don’t know the answer yet. There’s going to be whole new genre’s that we don’t even know about that are going to emerge from this and it’s really exciting about what that’s going to be.”
“We believe retail is at a tipping point,” said Robert Peck of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in a note to clients. “E-Retailers are leveraging new capabilities in old business models to expand existing and new markets like apparel, grocery and personal care, where e-Commerce had only limited penetration till now.” According to BusinessInsider, Peck calls it “E-commerce 2.0.”
Shopping online is growing fast, but still only represents a fraction of total shopping dollars, just under 8%, according to US Census data.
As of the first quarter 2016, the total amount of retail spending online (ecommerce) was $92.8 billion, which was only 7.8% of all retail sales. Ecommerce is in its infancy, which means that there are huge opportunities ahead, not just for the types of Amazon, but for small merchants and startups as well.
Worldwide retail sales, including in-store and internet purchases, surpassed $22 trillion in 2015, up 5.6% from 2014, according to a study by eMarketer. They say that retail ecommerce sales, those purchased over the internet, will make up 7.4% of the total retail market worldwide, or $1.671 trillion. By 2019, that share will jump to $3.578 trillion, yet retail ecommerce will still only account for 12.8% of all retail purchases.
Even though the internet and technology is the source of major disruption for retailers, brick and mortar is alive and well for the foreseeable future.
The study says that retail ecommerce sales are accelerating faster than previously anticipated and will jump 25.1% year on year in 2015. “Online sales growth will outpace brick-and-mortar sales growth by a more than 3-to-1 margin over our forecast period,” the report predicts.
Amazon Reshaping Ecommerce
Amazon recently passed Facebook to become the the fourth-largest US company based on stock market value. By 2020 analysts Rob Sanderson, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at MKM Partners, predicts that Amazon will be the largest US company by 2020.
“Amazon has a significant position in two of the largest secular growth opportunities there are,” Sanderson told Barron’s recently. What he was referring to were online retail and cloud computing.
As I said during my keynote @SohnConf, $AMZN is the most durable business in the world. $3T here we come…ps, you’re welcome.
Venture capitalist and part owner of the Golden State Warriors Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital said to a crowd at the Sohn Investment Conference recently that Amazon will be a $3 trillion dollar company within 10 years, almost ten times more than its current $366 billion market cap.
“Consider Amazon’s potential in retailing, said a Barron’s post. “It holds a 35% to 40% share of U.S. e-commerce, on its way to 50% by 2018, according to estimates from Doug Anmuth at JPMorgan published last month. And e-commerce is just 11% to 12% of U.S. retail, not counting gas, food and cars, on its way to more than 30% eventually, and 14% by 2018, according to Anmuth. In other words, Amazon is securing a quickly growing slice of a quickly growing pie.”
Internet Is Crushing Department Stores
There is one simple truth, internet retail is booming while brick & mortar department stores are in a free fall. The chart below from Standard Chartered Research tells the story
“U.S. private consumption has shown ongoing resilience,” says a note from Standard Chartered Plc via Bloomberg, “but this macro story masks sizeable divergence at the micro level, and this explains the wide interpretation of ‘how’s the U.S. consumer doing?’ The micro story is characterized by a parabolic rise in internet sales at the expense of ‘bricks and mortar’ stores, particularly department stores.”
The above stat isn’t as bad as you think considering that every department store also has an online presence and are working hard grow that aspect of their business. But even with that department stores are struggling online. “Digital sales continued strong, still growing double digits, but it too grew less rapidly than anticipated,” said Macy’s Chief Financial Officer Karen Hoguet during their May earnings call (PDF).
Internet business guru and financial analyst Robert Peck sees a shift in online shopping toward specialty boutiques and well run mom & pop stores. He says that as the internet generation grew up they don’t have reservations against online shopping like their parents did.
Presumably, one of the main drivers of online shoppers to Amazon was a belief that you wouldn’t get ripped off or have your credit card info passed around. This fear has dissipated over time but is completely non-existent with those that grew up with the internet.
Online Retail Will Diminish Need for Offline Stores
The Ovis report sees an “increasingly fragmented physical footprint,” with branded products moving to the internet. “Demand for large-footprint physical retail space will continue to fall,” says the report.
“Physical retail will still exist, but it will need a good reason to exist.” according to Dunkin’ Brands quoted in the Ovis report. The report portends that most new retail businesses will start online and later add some physical retail for showcasing products. They note that this is already the case in furniture. Retail will only play a supporting role in the future with new online retail stores in order to add trust with customers.
Existing pure-play online retailers will also continue to create physical locations, primarily to “enhance fulfillment and customer service.” They believe that much of this will take the form of the “click-and-collect models” which are common with UK retailers. “The UK today is the most advanced market for click-and-collect models, examples of which include ASOS and Boots, and eBay and Argos, a partnership that started in the UK and has been extended to Ireland,” says the report.
Click and collect is where the shopping is done online, but the items are physically picked up by the consumer at a fulfillment center or a retailer. Walmart in the US is one of the largest retailers offering this service.
According to the 2016 eCommerce Trends Report by Absolunete, an eCommerce agency based in Canada, depending on the types of products sold and the retailer’s network of physical stores, the proportion of consumers who prefer to pick up their purchase in store can reach up to 40%.
“Better still: offering customers the option to “Purchase & Pick-Up” often increases the average purchase value,” says the Absolunete report. “That’s right: 7% of customers who pick up their purchase in-store increase their spending while they’re on site (7% as measured in net sales). In Canada, where the prohibitive cost of residential shipping is an important challenge (the opposite is true in the U.S., where residential shipping is extremely inexpensive.), Purchase & Pick-Up becomes a win-win proposition!”
Absolunete says that “Purchase & Pick-Up” has advantages to the retailer:
Increasing net sales once the consumers is at the store picking up their online order.
Increasing conversion rates by making it easy for consumers to get their merchandise.
Decreasing return due to in-store exchange options.
Decreasing shipping costs and thereby increasing profit margins.
“We expect further partnerships to be made in order to allow Internet-based retailers to build up physical collection points,” states the Ovis report. “We also foresee noncompeting physical retailers collaborating to allow the collection of each other’s products in each other’s stores. This will allow them to maintain a virtual geographic presence despite the need to reduce their own physical store networks.”
From a showroom perspective, Amazon Books is a good example, where it has physical samples of not just popular books but all of Amazon’s products such as the Kindle, Echo and Kindle Fire tablets.
“The already blurred lines between physical-heritage retailers and Internet-heritage retailers will have been eradicated by 2026,” predicts the Ovis report. “The former will continue to reduce the amount of physical space they hold, switching their investment emphases online, while the latter will invest further in establishing physical presences to support the showcasing of brand and private-label products. While the large pure-play Internet retail brands will survive, the term pure play will be rendered obsolete.”
In-Store Digital
The Absolunete report predicts the rise of what it calls “in-store digital”, where consumers make online purchases while inside the physical store. Technology will be used to improve the customer experience and to make it a personal by “integrated gathering that allows retailers to better understand customers and customer behavior.”
The report suggest that it is increasingly common to see in-store advertising screens and tablets, enabling the consumer to search for products and to make online purchases while in the store, presumably of products that aren’t available in the store itself. “Going forward, customization tools and possibilities will go even further to improve customer experience. Paper posters and printed displays, for example, are being replaced by connected kiosks and displays which allow real-time, contextually-relevant messages to be displayed.”
Absolunete one interesting example by Rebecca Minkoff, partnering with Magento and eBay to create a Smart Dressing Room. They say that the system tracks what customers try on at the store and the sizes tried and what they buy and don’t buy. The store uses this data to send updates to the shopper if an item tried on is now available in her size or color. There are many more customization option being experimented with that may be available in the future. They say, “Think of it as cookies (like in your browser) that follow you around in the real world.”
“Engagement with the technology in Minkoff stores has been greater than expected,” said David Geisinger, who was previously eBay’s head of retail and mobile innovation but now is with Magento Commerce. “Engagement is on the customer’s terms, which I think is key, because it’s not intrusive.”
Technology is the Driving Force
eBay is in full preparation for the next commerce revolution and believes the heart of it is technological advancements coming together to reshape online selling. eBay CEO Devin Wenig believes that it is these innovations that will create an enormous opportunity for companies that are prepared to take advantage of them. And eBay is battle ready to just that, for years now seeing itself as both a great technology company… and a great ecommerce company too.
“We have seen the pace of tech innovation advance significantly — in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and virtual reality, all of which have the potential to reshape global technology dramatically in the next few years,” commented Wenig in a company announcement last week. “We are building eBay to be a vibrant and dynamic global technology leader for years to come, and we are starting to see results.”
“Everything we’ve done so far has been about positioning eBay for a future we can see advancing quickly towards us, in which innovations in technology platforms have the power to dramatically reshape the commerce experience,” Wenig says.
“We are entering what we call the Age of Everywhere — the profusion of cloud-connected devices that will bring the Internet to you, globalize the market, and make things faster and more on-demand,” said Wenig.
A report by Ovum, The Future of E-commerce: The Road to 2026 (PDF), predicts that over the next ten years instant gratification, powered by technology, will be a driving force in ecommerce. The report concludes that online retail today is “largely driven by price and convenience”, but by 2026 consumer expectations of the “ecommerce experience” will change dramatically.
“The desire for instant access and fast turnaround, 24/7, will be the norm by 2026, driven in particular by millennials (born approximately 1980–95) and also by Generation Z consumers (born
approximately 1996–2010),” the report says. “Generation Z are digital natives to the power of 10, with technology use their second nature. These generations are constantly connected and inhabit an online environment where events happen in real time without them having to wait, and where social media enables them to dictate terms.”
By 2026 the report predicts that consumer expectations will force online retailers to vastly improve customer support, will have to live up to expectations on the goods or services being delivered and shoppers will expect free delivery anytime and anywhere.
“Smartphone penetration is reaching new heights around the globe, and we are fast approaching the point where being an internet user means being a smartphone user,” commented Felim McGrath, who is the Trends Manager at GlobalWebIndex, in a blog post presenting the report. “This means that mobiles have the potential to become essential online commerce devices.”
McGrath backed up his comment with examples of how in Asia people are just as likely to shop online with their smartphones as they are a desktop computer. “Last month, close to half of South Koreans used their mobile to shop online,” he said. “And in China, mobile commerce has become the norm, with consumers now almost as likely to complete a purchase online via their mobile as via a laptop/PC.”
McGrath says that even though most consumers in Europe and North America are not mobile shoppers at these levels yet, it’s only a matter of time before they are.
The Ovis Report thinks that the trend toward more powerful smartphones with larger screens will help drive ecommerce and that retailers are optimizine the shopping experience for mobile. “Together, these developments are turning the smartphone into a platform that can support the whole shopping journey, from product search and discovery, to comparisons, recommendations,
and payments,” says the report.
The report notes that Android will continue to dominate iOS and that competition for payment systems won’t just be between Apple and Android, but will include multiple payments sytems on the the Android platform.
Social Media is a Key Driver of Ecommerce
Felim McGrath also believes that social media will be a driving force encouraging online shopping. He says that one third of the world’s population is now on social media, which is up an astounding 10% over last year.
“With such a significant amount of online time devoted to social media, there’s clear potential not only for advertising and marketing via social networks, but also for directly monetising users via ‘social commerce’,” said McGrath. “The last year has seen some of the world’s biggest social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest, testing or introducing integrated commerce options, acting as the middle-men between buyers and brands. The networks themselves have a clear interest in pushing this trend, both to increase engagement with their platforms and to open up healthy new revenue streams.”
The research from GWI shows that consumers are now becoming brand aware because of social media and are also using it to research products. McGrath sees this as an important step to using social to complete purchases. “Social commerce has a bright future,” says McGrath.
The Ovum report also predicts that the need for people to document their experiences on social media will motivate retailers to “increasingly align not only their brands but also the
shopping experience itself to this consumer desire for encounters worth sharing.”
“This can already be seen with the emerging trend for integrating social media with in-store retail, with the aim of creating socially driven shopping experiences,” the report notes. “In 2015, Victoria’s Secret encouraged shoppers to take selfies in front of displays and show them to sales assistants in return for a free gift – and hopefully share their selfies/experiences with friends.”
“Any doubters about social media’s powerful role in converting prospects into customers need to immediately re-evaluate their position,” notes the Absolunete report. “Like, now. Though their pure conversion rates are lower than those of organic results or Email, they are powerful tools that promote brand loyalty and are a great way to share the brand’s values. Through community-logic, social media is a valuable resource to convert curious prospects into new customers.”
According to Absolunete, with good social media management online stores can generate results that are sometimes superior to search marketing strategies such as Google Adwords. Social platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter are working to enhance their value to online retailers by adding functionalities that will guide the shopper towards a products pages with goal to convert their users into online retail customers.
“You may have noticed more and more “direct purchase” options popping up on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and most notably Facebook, which is responsible for 64% of social sales worldwide,” noted the report. “Retailers need to move quickly to capitalize on this; once the big, established eCommerce players will have fully implemented these tools, it’s going to be a lot harder – and more expensive – to stand out.”
On Instagram, for instance, you can now go directly from a picture to a product page which are being used by brands such as Banana Republic via StylePick. What’s more, celebrity endorsers are now being used by brands in this process leveraging their huge numbers of followers to create commerce.
93% of Pinterest users have bought something online in the last 6 months, according to Absolunete. They also note that Pinterest is the source of 16% of all social sales, with their “Rich Pins” allowing retailers to fully integrate online stores and automatically synchronizing product pages with the products “Pin”. J. Crew, Gap and Nordstrom all utilize this effective Pinterest ecommerce motivator.
Ecommerce while Messaging
Another emerging trend is the integration of ecommerce into messaging apps, which is already happening in Asia. McGrath notes that Line and WeChat have already integrated multiple commerce features and other “opportunities for monetization.” He believes this revenue opportunity is the “inspiration” behind Facebook’s move to make Messenger a separate app and their motivation to focus on messaging so aggressively. Indeed they are very focused on messaging, having paid $22 billion for WhatsApp in 2014, a startup that only had revenues $10.2 million in the year before its acquisition.
Again, Asia shows the way forward here. Messaging apps like Line and WeChat have pushed beyond simple chat apps to integrate a broad range of commerce options and opportunities for monetization, forming the clear inspiration for Facebook’s recent development of Messenger Platform. All these developments mean that social commerce has a bright future.
Artificial intelligence also plays a role in messaging. “During this time, we’ve seen artificial intelligence reach an inflection point,” Wenig said. “This innovation is already beginning to take hold of the messaging space with the arrival of conversational assistants. Artificial intelligence has the potential to bring an era of deep personalization to the commerce space.
VR, AR and Wearable Devices
“Due to the proliferation of wearable devices and technology, smart TVs, connected cars and household appliances, beacons, and other technologies, the consumer journey in 2026 will increasingly look like a pretzel that twists, turns and loops back on itself,” noted the Ovum study. “Consumers can start and end their shopping experiences on a mobile platform, in store or online. It is a fluid movement that by 2026 will be even harder for retailers to keep up with or predict because it will include a growing number of devices and touchpoints.
It is key for retailers to not only keep track of consumers across many devices and touchpoints, but to also accurately measure where sales are coming from. This will require retailers and their advertising partners to build to significantly improve ad tracking technology.
One of the key drivers of wearable technology is virtual reality and augmented reality. “Virtual and augmented reality will be the next platform revolution,” says Wenig. “This is already prevalent in the gaming world, but it has the potential to be far more disruptive.”
The Ovum report predicts that by 2026 consumers will expect a more “real” shopping experience which will mean an integration of augmented reality into online stores. Consumers will expect an an “event experience” that will rival walking into a brick and mortar store.
“This will translate into interactive, highly engaging online and real-world retail environments where augmented reality (AR) plays a key role,” the report says. “The provision of distinct and tangible shopping experiences, online and real-world, will become a key means to enhance and differentiate a brand’s value proposition.”
One of the key drivers for augmented reality being used by online stores is increasing the conversion rate. Generally, retailers do much better when a consumer walks into their physical store locations compared with internet shopping, because there is no human connection.
Epson’s Moverio smart glasses are one solution for retailers, where an online shopper can click the the “GoInStore” button and a sales associate at the physical store will walk the customer through high value products with wearing the smart glasses. Clicking the button initiates a two way voice call and a one way video stream of whatever the sales person is looking at.
Luxury car dealer Amari in the UK uses the glasses to show off their extremely expensive cars to online prospects. “Our sales team know every single detail of these cars, even to the level of knowing the tyre pressures,” said Sheikh Amari, CEO of Amari SuperCars in an Internet Retailing post. “This knowledge is difficult to bring across online and we have been looking for ways to bring our expertise into the online environment.”
“This new technology enables our customers to travel to our showroom in real-time and experience the cars remotely – giving us a competitive edge and the ability to close sales quicker, providing our customers a totally unique, convenient and trusted car buying experience,” said Amari. “Our customers – who include investors and collectors – are very busy people, based all around the world, who typically know what they want but often have to rely solely on the pictures that are on the website.”
YouTube is ramping up its virtual reality efforts.
The company has announced two new VR features for its Android app – VR video support and the ability to watch any YouTube video via Google’s Cardboard VR headset.
“First, YouTube now supports VR video—a brand new kind of video that makes you feel like you’re actually there. Using the same tricks that we humans use to see the world, VR video gives you a sense of depth as you look around in every direction. Near things look near, far things look far. So if you were excited about 360° videos, this is pretty freakin’ cool,” says YouTube.
“Our second bit of news is for the universe of existing YouTube content. And that’s the fact that you can now watch any video using Google Cardboard, and experience a kind of virtual movie theater. Just select the new “Cardboard” option from the watch page menu, drop your phone into your viewer, and you’re done. You’ll now have the largest VR content library right at your fingertips.”
AR Will Be as Ubiquitous as the Internet 
Since then, I’ve made it my mission to make sure what happened to Sergio doesn’t happen to any other young person in my country. I started the 
