https://medium.com/6d-ai/dawn-of-the-ar-cloud-1b31eb4b52ac

Since Apple’s WWDC conference this time last year, which fired the starting gun for consumer AR with the launch of ARKit, we’ve seen every big platform announce an AR strategy: Google’s ARCore; Facebook’s camera platform; Amazon Sumerian; and Microsoft continuing to build out its Mixed Reality ecosystem. We’ve also seen thousands of developers experiment with AR Apps but very little uptake with consumers. Back in Sept 2017, I predicted that AR Apps will struggle for engagement without the AR Cloud, and this has certainly turned out to be the case. However we are now witnessing the dawn of the cloud services which will unlock compelling capabilities for AR developers, but only if cloud providers get their UX right. It’s not about being first to market, but first to achieving a consumer grade UX.

Does anyone remember AR before ARKit & ARCore? It technically worked, but the UX was clunky. You needed a printed marker or to hold & move the phone carefully to get started, then it worked pretty well. Nice demo videos were made showing the final working experience which wow’ed people. The result…. zero uptake. Solving the technical problem (even if quite a hard technical problem) turned out to be very different to achieving a UX that consumers could use. It wasn’t until ARKit was launched that a “just works” UX for basic AR was available (and this was 10 years after Mobile SLAM was invented in the Oxford Active Vision Lab which Victor Prisacariu, my 6D.ai cofounder, leads).