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Data Point of the Week is ARtillry’s weekly dive into data from around the XR universe. Spanning usage and market-sizing data, it’s meant to draw insights for XR players or would-be entrants. To see an indexed archive of data briefs and slide bank, subscribe to ARtillry Pro.
What types of AR apps are consumers most interested in? Accenture and Harris Interactive report that travel (learning more about a place you’re visiting) and education (learning new skills or techniques) top the list. 67% of survey respondents reported interest in each.
AR travel use cases include magic portals, such as Marriott’s “Portal to Paradise” iOS app. Though the market could be limited in that it’s not an everyday (much less all-day) use case, it has strong utility — a key success factor for AR. And consumers in this survey show clear interest.
As examined recently by Spatial Canvas founder & CEO Michael Park, travel use cases can also include valuable utilities such as navigating airports, consumer-facing in-situ instructions in hotel rooms, and educational/touristy overlays for travelers in new places (think Zagat-type info).
As for AR learning, this has more potential utility and frequency. It could also have wide area applicability (market size) in consumer products — everything from toys to power tools. This overlaps with viewing 3-D manuals (58 percent), such as Mercedes Benz’ AR instruction manual.
A close 3rd (61 percent) was using AR to “visualize how clothes might fit,” followed by shopping for household items and furniture. These are common use cases and early success stories for AR, despite relatively lower ranks in this survey, due to (again) utility and potential frequency.
Playing games was oddly the least-desired AR activity in this survey. This doesn’t align with today’s AR usage, where gaming is predominant (see below). That’s due mostly to the outlier that is Pokemon Go, but it could continue to be a strong use case given Niantic’s momentum.
These survey data mostly align with reason and with current usage we’ve seen in our data and elsewhere. It’s always valuable to look at what consumers want next from AR (or any consumer product), but “aspirational” survey data should always be taken with appropriate salt tonnage.
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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.
Header image credit: Marriott