“At WWDC this year, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi performed a demo of the company’s new augmented reality platform, ARKit, while mentioning popular furniture company IKEA as an upcoming partner in the technology,” Mitchel Broussard reports for MacRumors. “Similarly, Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced an IKEA AR partnership in a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.”
“Now, Ikea executive Michael Valdsgaard has spoken about the company’s partnership with Apple and ARKit, describing an all-new augmented reality app that will help customers make “reliable buying decisions” for IKEA’s big ticket items,” Broussard reports. “When it launches, the app will let customers choose which IKEA product they want and then use an iPhone or iPad powered by ARKit to see how the IKEA furniture looks in their own home before it’s purchased.”
“Valdsgaard said that the app will support between 500 and 600 IKEA products at launch with more being added afterwards,” Broussard reports. “The augmented reality experience will even directly play into the development and launch of new products, as Valdsgaard explained that the company plans to first debut new pieces of furniture in the app to give customers a taste of what’s coming… Selling furniture directly within the app is a possibility as well, but isn’t the company’s focus for the first iteration of the software.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll be really great when you can simply tap on the virtual item you want and buy it instantly with Apple Pay!
As we wrote earlier this month:
With ARKit in developers’ hands, the release of iOS 11 will instantly make Apple the proud owner of the largest AR platform in the world by far.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s single most important WWDC 2017 announcement: ARKit – June 11, 2017
Apple CEO Cook discusses philosophy behind HomePod, ARKit’s potential market impact – June 6, 2017
Overnight, Apple will own the world’s largest augmented reality platform – June 7, 2017