The mobile OS wars between iOS and Android have occupied much of the past ten years. They reached varying levels of intensity in early days of competition over market share, but have matured a bit over the past few years.

Now a component of those operating systems could reignite the competition: their respective AR development kits. This was the topic of ARtillry’s recent report, ARCore and ARkit: The Acceleration of Mobile AR, and is broken down in the latest ARtillry Briefs episode (see below).

One question is which AR toolkit is positioned better for growth and market share? It won’t be a winner take all market, just as iOS and Android have coexisted for years. And there is evidence that they’ll have some compatibility, or at least portability of graphical assets.

But they’ll compete on many levels. Google has greater scale and a technical lead from years invested in Tango, while Apple has more control over the hardware in its classic vertical integration. Google’s DNA leads it towards WebAR, while Apple continues to be all about apps.

In terms of reach, Apple has the short-run advantage, due to more unified hardware and software, which support wider compatibility with ARkit. But Google has longer-term scale as ARCore compatibility cycles into the larger Android universe (3.6 billion devices by 2020).

See the episode below for a further breakdown, and stay tuned for ongoing coverage as ARCore and ARkit evolve.

https://youtu.be/angUM2cNCF0

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Disclosure: ARtillry has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this post, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.