“Shopify Inc has been enormously successful developing an e-commerce platform that helps small- and medium-sized businesses set up and manage an online store. The company simplified the process by creating a one-stop shop that was easy to navigate and put e-commerce within reach for companies of all sizes.,” Danny Vena writes for The Motley Fool. “Now Shopify is infusing augmented reality into its offerings, which has attracted the attention of none other than Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, one of the biggest proponents of the technology.”
“Late last year, Shopify revealed that it had created an in-app augmented reality feature in conjunction with Chip and Joanna Gains, from HGTV’s program Fixer Upper, for their home and lifestyle brand Magnolia,” Vena writes. “The AR app allowed customers to see how specific housewares would look in their homes by placing virtual objects into the space using the camera on their phone. The ability for online shoppers to see how a potential purchase would actually look against the backdrop of their home could be a groundbreaking technology in the realm of e-commerce.”
“These AR innovations caught the attention of Cook, who made a surprise visit to Shopify’s Toronto headquarters. Cook was treated to numerous demonstrations that incorporated an iPad and apps built on the ARKit platform that Apple debuted last year,” Vena writes. “The release of ARKit was a game-changer according to Shopify, because it created more realistic AR where the virtual objects that were created were ‘almost indistinguishable from the reality they’re dropped in,’ according to Braveen Kumar, a content creator for Shopify.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Augmented reality certainly holds great potential for e-commerce, as you can see from this video:
For more info, see Shopify’s blog posting “How Augmented Reality Is Changing the Way Consumers See the World” here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
In other news, Ontario chooses Shopify to run online cannabis sales: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-shopify-marijuana-online-shopping-1.4531228
While AR is big and will likely get bigger, people’s imagination is already small by default and will likely get smaller.
Running ARKit on iPhones would seem to give Apple a pretty decent advantage but I’ve never heard much praise about it or giving iPhones any specific edge over Android smartphones. Maybe most consumers aren’t really aware of AR and what it can do for them.