The AR Roundup: May 2018

Here’s what you missed in augmented reality for May 2018

Numbers

• SuperData Research expects the Oculus Go to sell 1.81M this year alone. SuperData expects the Go to lead the VR race with Playstation VR and Gear VR rounding out the top 3 this year (Games Industry)
• A survey completed by Toshiba IT found that 82% of enterprises predict that AR smart glasses will be used by their business in the next 3 years (CBR)
• Apple revealed that its wearable division which includes Apple Watch and AirPods is up nearly 50% year-over-year with Tim Cook now calling it the size of a Fortune 300 company (Apple Insider)
• Microsoft may have sold only 50,000 devices to date according to a video published by the European Patent Office (MSPoweruser)
• Vuzix reported an increase of 30% year-over-year in the fist quarter with $1.5M in revenue, helped by Blade & Toshiba pre-orders (VR Focus)

Money

Big News

• Adobe announces $10M Fund for Design (Adobe)

Platforms & Tools

• Fantasmo raises $2M in funding led by TenOneTen Ventures (TechCrunch)
• Allegro.AI nabs $11M for “deep learning as a service” for businesses to build computer vision products (TechCrunch)
• Loom.ai Secures $3M Seed Round From Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (BusinessWire)

Hardware

• AR display maker DigiLens raises $25M Series C (TechCrunch)

News

Hardware

• Kopin starts selling $500 Solos smart glasses for joggers and cyclists (Venturebeat)
• Snapchat launches Spectacles V2 (TechCrunch)
• WaveOptics And EVG Collaborate For Sub-$600 AR Glasses (VR Focus)
• ODG Partners With Leading Japanese Telco KDDI to Bring ODG Smartglasses to Japan (BusinessWire)

Platform & Tools

• Google launches new Cloud Anchors to enable multi-player AR (TechCrunch)
• Google launches Lens directly in the camera app for supported Android devices (Google)
• Facebook brings augmented reality to Messenger bots (Venturebeat)
• Facebook and Sketchfab partner to bring free 3D models to AR Studio (Venturebeat)
• Amazon Sumerian, a platform for building AR, VR and 3D apps, is now open to all (TechCrunch)

Applications & Solutions

• Facebook’s AR camera effects platform comes to Instagram (TechCrunch)
• Google debuts new augmented reality feature for Google Maps (TechCrunch)
• Google brings AR support to Instant Apps (The Verge)
• Microsoft launches two enterprise apps for HoloLens: Remote Assist and Layout (TechCrunch)
• Sherwin-Williams launches AR app to take the guesswork out of choosing paint (Mobile Marketer)
• Snapchat launches AR selfie games called Snappables (TechCrunch)
• Mozilla launches Hubs, a social browser-based WebVR experiment (VentureBeat)
• New York Times publishes NASA’s latest mission to Mars in AR (NY Times)
• Lenovo & Disney’s Star Wars Jedi Challenge AR toy gets two-player support (CNET)

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