Mobile first? Soon you’ll be building for AR/VR first.
Not too long ago, optimizing content for mobile was not important. The industry had endless discussions on HTML5 vs native vs Hybrid apps. Websites tried to resist customizing for mobile for as long as they could. Even big companies like Google and Facebook did not announce mobile first strategies until 2010 or so. Change is hard and people take a long time to adapt. Google & Facebook are now penalizing websites that are not mobile responsive to force them to move on.
Even after the rise of the internet, many enterprises are still lagging behind in terms of technology adoption. By enterprise, I’m referring all non-individual consumer entities; i.e businesses, educational institutions, governments and non-profits. Within the enterprise world, some industries are a lot slower than others. This is especially the case in government, healthcare and finance. Many IT houses in those sectors are still running email servers on premise and have not moved to the cloud. The drive for change has to be really strong for these enterprises to move. Simple incentives are not strong enough drivers for change to occur. Its has to be a matter of survival.
Enter Virtual Reality
We are now on the brink of a new computing platform. AR/VR devices are popping up all over the place with big name players offering a range of experiences at various price points. Several new VC funds and angel groups are exclusively focused on AR/VR companies. Entrepreneurs are forming AR/VR startups focusing on use cases all over the place; some seem very logical and others make you scratch your head wondering if that will ever work. The whole industry is taking a bet and the hype is heating up. You start hearing people forming buzzword combos like AR, VR, AI, ML, Bots, IoT, Big Data, and Cloud. This is the new Social, Local, Mobile (wink to the new season of Silicon Valley).
Despite all the hype, we still don’t have a killer app that gets enterprise to jump on AR/VR bandwagon. We have not yet seen the VisiCalc of the Apple II . Many entrepreneurs I talked to think the user experience in AR alone is the killer app. Having data easily accessible in front of you without holding a metal bar next to your face sounds appealing for sure. Is that enough though? I think the magic will really happen when cross the line of pure luxury (Apple watch) to an essential item (your smartphone). That’s what VisiCalc did for the Apple II.
I’m hoping and actually betting my money & career on having more than one killer use case for AR/VR especially in the enterprise world. If we are going to see a breakthrough, it will be on mobile and here is why:
The numbers make sense: there are more mobile devices than people.
Major and emerging players including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, HTC, Intel, Magic Leap, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others will drive prices and device weight down pretty quickly. While performance, battery life and visual quality will continue to rise. Same principles behind Moore’s law but applied on AR/VR systems rather than transistor size. This will help speed up the adoption curve and create new opportunities across the board. It will be like the 80s for PCs! Now with a ton of open source software/hardware and a lot more talented people to create magical content for these systems.
The incentives are already there for some businesses. Remember Google Glass? Boeing used it successfully for their technicians on the assembly floor.
For these reasons, if you want to be future-proof its no longer about a mobile first world. It is time for mobile AR/VR first.
What do you think? What’s the killer app for AR/VR? And no, it’s not Pokemon Go!
