Tom Carpenter: Augmented Reality in 2010 (Part 5)

Tom Carpenter: Augmented Reality in 2010 (Part 5)

Thomas Carpenter and I have started blogging about augmented reality roughly at the same time, at the start of 2009. Since then Thomas has made The Future Digital Life one of the prime sources for augmented reality news. Moreover, as an aspiring science fiction author and a manager at Toyota, he usually has a unique point of view on the budding AR industry. Here are his predictions for 2010 (sadly, he decided to keep it professional so there are no snarky remarks):

• Apple's tablet will take AR to the next level with object recognition and a wider screen to view the world.
• There will NOT be any AR related IPOs.
• A company will come out with an expensive (>$2000) see-through HMD late in the year.
• Console gaming will start talking about AR more actively (but few games released)

Lester Madden has taken the time to write a full post over Augmented Planet elaborating on his predictions I've posted yesterday. Here's a short excerpt:

My comment about a Layar/Wikitude merge was purely speculative but having seen Google’s announcement about Goggles I do wonder if the market is big enough for 3 main browsers to continue to exist. ...
Personally I would not have wanted to have woken up to the news that Google with their R&D budget to rival a small country had released a beta augmented reality browser, not only that but a beta that appears to do so much. Google compete for fun, there are not many companies that pull off the feat of becoming a serious player in the mobile space almost overnight, If Google decide they want to own the augmented reality browser space how do you compete with that?

And Chris Grayson has also posted his predictions for 2010 over at GigantiCo. Some of his predictions are quite bold:

Before the year is out, a translucent AR tablet device will be available on the consumer market. The concept as shown at left is of the Red Dot Award winning design of Mac Funamizu. With transparent OLED perfected by multiple vendors and begging for a consumer application, I expect to see this form factor show up on the market quite soon.

So what do you think? Will we have see-through HMD or tablets by the end of 2010? Will Wikitude and Layar join forces to fight off Google? Share your opinion in the comments, on your own blog or Twitter (use the #AR2010 tag).

Previously in the series:
AR in 2010 Part 1 - What's your opinion? - Our online poll
AR in 2010 Part 2 - Crazy predictions that might come true.
AR in 2010 Part 3 - Thomas Wrobel's predictions
AR in 2010 Part 4 - Augmented Planet's Lester Madden's predictions.
The predictions for 2010 will come back on Monday, with Noah Zerkin's predictions.