Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Augmented Reality Augmentation: Blippar Has Bought Layar

Some consolidation â€" or augmentation, if you will â€" in the world of augmented reality. Blippar â€" an image recognition platform used in digital advertising â€" has acquired Layar, an augmented reality platform used across different applications (from advertising to education) that uses cameras on devices like smartphones to inject virtual elements into real-world images in real time.

Blippar is not officially commenting on the acquisition, noting, “We cannot comment on market speculation at this stage, but Blippar is dedicated to growing the global marketplace for immersive, engaging content, and part of this strategy may include acquisitions later in the year.”

But we have sourced a memo from Blippar’s CEO and co-founder, Ambarish Mitra, announcing the deal that we have confirmed is genuine. From what we understand, the deal was planned to be announced officially on June 19.

We haven’t been able to nail down the terms of the deal but we are trying to find out. To date, London/NYC-based Blippar, founded in 2011, has raised an undisclosed amount from Qualcomm Ventures. Netherlands-based Layar, founded in 2009, has raised some $17 million from Intel Capital, Sunstone and others.

More recently, at least one of Layar’s co-founders, Raimo van der Klein, has moved on to do other things, such as this Google Glass app that lets you nod to pay for items.

Mitra’s memo notes that discussions between the companies started a few months ago when Quintin Schevernels visited Blippar’s offices to discuss “how we could work together to bring our vision to hundreds of millions of people.”

Indeed, the name of the game here appears to be scale for the two companies. In a market that is heavy on innovation, it will give the combined startups more R&D firepower, and potentially the ability to pool together their publisher relationships to be able to serve a wider audience, and also move into newer areas such as white-label services.

“It gives us the best shot at truly changing the world. It opens doors to new opportunities and partnerships, reduces risk on learning from scratch, gives us headspace in market for whitelabels,” Mishra writes. The company today focuses its product around “blipps” in which users snap pictures in printed or other display ads through the Blippar app, triggering bigger and more interactive campaigns.

The other area where this will be important is to compete better against other AR rivals. A combined company, Mishra writes, “allows us to play in the whole AR market place and compete with people like Metaio and Vuforia with whom we weren’t previously competing.”

Augmented reality applications have been around for a while now â€" Layar especially was an early mover in this area, using cameras on phones to provide real-time overlays of images on to real-world locations â€" with applications of the technology being used in mobile games, advertising and other areas.

But some of that may have been ahead of its time â€" or that’s the sympathetic spin, at least. Less charitably, it’s been called overhyped and pointless.

That perception (see what I did there?) is almost certainly changing, though. More recently, buzzy headgear makers like Oculus VR (now gobbled up by Facebook for $2 billion) and Meta have added a new twist to the idea of injecting virtual reality into real-world scenarios. So, rather than getting sidelined amidst the evolution, both Layar and Blippar have been tapping into that, with AR applications for products like Google Glass â€" efforts that are likely to step up a notch in the bigger organisation.

The full memo from Blippar’s CEO below:

Strictly for internal information only.  NOT to be communicated outside of Blippar until further notice â€" when more detailed notes will be circulated for reference.

We started Blippar with a vision of delivering incredible, engaging, and ubiquitous consumer augmented reality to the world by building a physical world browser. We’ve come a long way in the last 33 months: from prototypes built in my flat to an incredible team building dreams with more than 1000 brands and publishers. In the process, we’ve defined what consumer augmented reality needs to be and what it’s going to require to deliver it.

A few months ago, Quintin CEO of Layar, came down to visit our office, see the latest demos, and discuss how we could work together to bring our vision to 100s of millions of people.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve acquired Layar to create the best augmented reality platform in the world.

At first glance, it might not seem obvious why Blippar is buying Layar, a company focused on low cost blipps, a long tail client ecosystem and does white-labels. But when you consider it more carefully, we’re culturally aligned on building a new behaviour -with a focus on innovating and hiring the best and brightest; we both believe AR is a key driver in future of information access; we both want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see augmented reality as the 8th mass market medium.  Most importantly, Layar understands and appreciates what Blippar has achieved; their teams share our vision for AR’s potential to transform the way we learn, share, play, and communicate.

This partnership represents a pivotal moment in the development of augmented reality: it gives us the best shot at truly changing the world. It opens doors to new opportunities and partnerships, reduces risk on learning from scratch, gives us headspace in market for whitelabels, and allows us to play in the whole AR market place and compete with people like Metaio and Vuforia with whom we weren’t previously competing.

Over the next 10 years, augmented reality will become ubiquitous, affordable, and transformative, and it begins with a truly next-generation platform. This partnership ensures that the Blippar2.0 platform is coming, and that it’s going to make the physical world limitless.

Best

Rish

Ambarish Mitra
CEO & Founder

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