Where is augmented reality going in 2019 — and beyond?

In 2018, augmented reality started to heat up as Magic Leap released its much-anticipated headset, paving the way for others to explore and support massive AR development on their platforms. AR continues to be a rapidly growing space, as more tech companies continue building out their own competitive technologies — including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Magic Leap. The new year will be an important one for the software and hardware components of AR to shine. Here are some predictions for where we’ll see AR as we move into 2019: With the launch of ARKit 2.0, we now have multiplayer functionality in mobile AR, which lets multiple people experience an AR scene together. In 2019, we will see more interesting functionalities to AR including the ability for objects to stay fixed in a specific area. Perhaps even the digital 3D characters can interact with each other and/or with tangible objects in the space (like a pony jumping up and down on a couch or two AR objects dancing together). As more consumers move to better smartphones, we’ll see a surge of AR in mobile. AR-enabled phones will continue to be the easiest access point for everyday consumers to experience AR. Hardware will not only become cheaper and more accessible, but also faster with less side effects, such as the heating up and draining of the battery power. As far as Android AR enabled phones in 2018, there was a jump from 100 million to 250 million when it comes to Android ARCore devices. Apple also saw 380 million iPhones with ARKit capabilities by the end of last year. With both Android and Apple devices seeing large numbers of adoption to their newest phones, AR usage will continue to exponentially grow in 2019.