{"id":343532,"date":"2017-06-13T22:29:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1502498"},"modified":"2017-06-13T22:29:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:29:51","slug":"apple-undercuts-facebook-in-the-augmented-reality-platform-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/apple-undercuts-facebook-in-the-augmented-reality-platform-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple undercuts Facebook in the augmented reality platform war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook may be the world\u2019s most powerful app, but it\u2019s still just an app on Apple\u2019s operating system.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s grand vision<\/a> for augmented reality was that it would make it easy for any developer to build and distribute an AR experience \u2014 as long as it lived inside Facebook\u2019s app. But Apple has once again used its control of the mobile operating system to build a wider platform than Facebook can, this time with AR that lives inside developers\u2019 own apps.<\/p>\n

This already played out with mobile apps.<\/p>\n

On the open web of desktops, Facebook built a massively powerful game platform that spawned huge businesses like Zynga. On mobile, it couldn\u2019t do the same. Apple forbid developers from building app stores inside their apps. Facebook tried to build its own HTML5 game platform<\/a> inside its native app anyway.<\/p>\n

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Here come the augmented reality platform wars<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Yet since HTML5 web games couldn\u2019t draw on the phone\u2019s computing power the same way as a native app, Facebook\u2019s \u201cProject Spartan\u201d flopped while the Apple App Store thrived. Facebook promised virality to these app developers, but since their experiences would be buried layers deep inside the phone\u2019s homescreen, then the distracting Facebook app, and then inside its HTML5 app platform alongside competitors, they never flocked aboard.<\/p>\n

Now Facebook is in danger of that same scenario playing out with augmented reality.<\/p>\n

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Facebook knows that sleek, capable, affordable AR glasses are still years away. Instead, it sees the phone camera as today\u2019s AR device, which already has massive scale. So at this year\u2019s F8 in April, it launched the Facebook Camera Effects platform<\/a>. Developers can use its AR Studio program to develop interactive AR experiences that overlay make-believe animation atop the real world, triggered by locations, objects, data streams, and more.<\/p>\n

Facebook has a number of advantages with this strategy. Its app is already massively popular, with 1.9 billion monthly users. It has 10-year history of working with developers<\/a>. And since everything in AR happens \u201con camera\u201d it will be easy for users to share the content with friends via Facebook, helping the developers to grow.<\/p>\n

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Facebook showed off use cases for its AR camera platform including overlaid info like maps, virtual objects like an interactive chess board, and augmented objects like turning your house into a castle<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But as desktop games, brand Pages, and news publishers have learned, depending entirely on Facebook\u2019s walled garden can be risky. If Facebook changes directions, seeks to shield its users from noise, or wants to assume more power, there\u2019s little these outsiders can do to control the terms of the deal. Suddenly they can see their viral reach decimated, because since Facebook hosts all these developers, poor experiences reflect on it directly so it\u2019s quick to prioritize long-term user satisfaction over everyone else\u2019s businesses.<\/p>\n

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That paves the way for Apple\u2019s approach to augmented reality. ARKit, launched last week at WWDC, lets developers easily take advantage of the iPhone\u2019s camera and Visual Inertial Odometry to overlay AR content on the real world within their own apps. Developers control their own destiny, deciding what to do and how to promote their AR experiences.<\/p>\n

They won\u2019t have to hope to be featured by Facebook or abide by its rules. And their native iOS AR apps will be available to many more people than those built on Google\u2019s Tango AR platform that only runs on a small subset of Android phones equipped with special hardware.<\/p>\n

Since every iOS app can easily plug in AR features, Facebook\u2019s camera platform loses some of its singular charm. If Apple had waited just one more year to launch ARKit, or even just until the new iPhone and iOS 11 launch in September, it could have been stuck playing catch-up to Facebook\u2019s AR dev community. Instead it seized the opportunity by launching its platform just six weeks after Facebook.<\/p>\n