90s favorite Pokémon goes all new age, ushers in AR

Who would have thought that a gang of brightly colored cartoon characters from the 1990s would, in 2016, drive a young multibillion dollar industry into the mainstream?

This is exactly what Pikachu, the red-cheeked yellow rodent largely known as the Pokémon franchise's mascot, and friends did for augmented reality with Pokémon Go.

VentureBeat has just reported that Pokémon Go is now the "top-grossing app in the $36.9 billion mobile-gaming sector and the entire iOS and Android app market." This is thanks to the $35 million in revenue the free-to-play game has generated from 30 million worldwide downloads. Pokémon Go was first released in the US last July 7 where it was downloaded more than 7.5 million times via iOS and Android in the first five days alone. It is now available in the US, Canada and nearly 30 countries in Europe, and TechCrunch said the game is set to launch in Japan July 20 via its first sponsored location.

These huge and still-climbing download numbers mean more and more users experience AR in real-life settings that could be as mundane as a street corner. The South China Morning Post has quoted Dr Yue Fei, uSens chief technology officer and co-founder as saying "It really lets users get familiar with what AR can do." uSens is a Silicon Valley-based VR startup founded in 2013.

It is Pokémon Go's massive reach that has led many industry insiders to label it a "killer app," pushing technology—AR in this case—from obscurity to mainstream practically in the blink of an eye.

AR, however, has a lot more to offer other than allowing Pokémon trainers to chase creatures around the neighborhood. Digi-Capital said VR/AR revenue could hit $120 billion by 2020, with AR accounting for 75 percent or $90 billion.

Part of AR's earnings will definitely come from apps and gadgets that enable"visual discovery," but the technology is making its way into business operations. For a recent article, Business News Daily discussed with industry experts how AR is changing the current workplace and its future applications.

Asia, meanwhile, is not standing still as it waits for the regional Pokémon server to go live.

Fujian province, China-based NetDragon Websoft, for example, has lined up AR learning events across Asia that will use 3D interactive holograms of celebrities and speakers. SCMP quoted NetDragon vice chairman Simon Leung Lim-kin as saying, "Interactive holograms are the ultimate form of augmented reality, and we expect to tap into new opportunities for the use of this technology in China and across the Asia-Pacific region."

Just last April at the Global Sources Mobile Electronics show, MK Global of South Korea introduced the first AR puzzle, which uses the Nayo app to incorporate a physical toy dinosaur into the app world.