Augmented Reality For Glass App Announced At MWC Barcelona

During this year’s Mobile World Congress event held in Barcelona, a new way to use Google Glass has emerged and now the device can be used for augmented reality and image recognition. So, from now on, you will be able to see on the tiny screen entertainment programs and advertising integrated seamlessly among the real-life objects from your usual environment.

In the past couple of years, AR or augmented reality has gained terrain in both entertainment and marketing and people seem to be quite fond of it. However, there still are a few more issues to fix with the viewing options. For instance, in the current moment, services that overlay information on a real-life thing request the user to hold his smartphone in a certain position, meaning that if you would want to use the app you would have to hold your phone up between you and the object of interest. But Glass is here to put an end to this inconvenient as now, users can use the augmented reality app instantly without putting it in a certain angle. So, if mass consumers are convinced by the power of Glass this year, Juniper Research estimates that by 2019, AR users all over the world will grow from 60 million to about 200 million users.

The new app aims to deliver information by pulling up AR layers for the objects near you that are recognizable, meaning that in order to do so Blipping will draw information from Blippar’s image recognition system, for instance if you see a candy-bar Glass could also display an add for the brand. Ambarish Mitra, the CEO and co-founder of Blippar stated in an interview for Quartz that you could simply look at a flyer and receive additional information related to the promotion.

Considering that Blippar is only a platform, it cannot create content and no one can control the type of content the user sees. More than that, so far the smartphone variant of this app was providing only 30% commercial information while the rest was educational content such as information regarding magazines and museums. We find Mitra’s point of view quite accurate and it is indeed very interesting to walk into a museum, see a piece of history and being able to instantly see more information about it. Mitra is also thinking about introducing the app in medical domains: by offering additional information about the medicines one has to take such as dosage, side effects and so on.

When asked about commercial content on Blippar, Mitra said that not even on Glass advertisers won’t get a bigger slice of the cake and that he is very keen on keeping Blippar platform as it is. He also added that when Glass delivers content, the user has to agree with what he is about to see and confirm the action by saying “Ok, Glass” and that no one will force users to watch certain content against their will.

This isn’t the first time we hear about augmented reality and Mitra isn’t trying to reinvent fire, he is just putting it to a different use. Our only hope is that he would keep these sayings in mind when advertisers will offer him big money to climb on this new advertising instrument.