For every application we examined, we further classified the application into sub categories.

Analysis of the browser sub category

There are a lot of augmented reality browsers for the iPhone. By far the most clustered subgroups of browsers are:

• City guides (eg where to eat in xzy or touristy type apps)
• Transport (eg find my nearest, tube, bus, train etc)
• Local search (eg search Bling, Google etc and display the results)

This is probably not a good market to enter.

The breakdown for application published to other categories is as followed.

Breakdown by category

Some notes about the above categories:

• Navigation applications are generally – where did I leave my car type apps
• A lot of photography applications are not really augmented reality applications. (many have simple functionality such as put a hat on a head in a photo)
• Compasses and HUDs are account for a lot of utilities
• Transparent UIs are applications that let you tweet/email while the camera is on
• (yes ‘level’ in utilities is repeated twice in error)

As we looked at the applications being published, we also looked to see why that application claimed to be an ‘augmented reality application’

Augmented-ness

It probably comes as no surprise that most applications use the camera display to display data. A lot of developers out there use augmented reality to describe their application just because it uses the camera. Most of the picture applications we examined we didn’t consider to be real augmented reality applications as their functionality was too simple. Adding a hat or some text to a photo is not AR.

We also looked at price.

Augmented applications by price

Most applications are less than $0.99. The most expensive applications are niche satellite applications.

We also looked at future applications and started keeping a list of what’s on the horizon. Real Estate finders and image recognition shopping applications seem to be something that a lot of developers are working on right now.

Summary
Hopefully the data is useful, it’s interesting to see what people are building and what is out there. Building yet another local search browser is probably not a good use of your time, unless you have a hook that is better than the other 26 of your competitors.

Incidently the break down of costs for browsers is:

• Free – 72 apps
• $0.99 – 29 apps
• $1.99 – 29 apps
• $2.99 -  2 apps
• $4.99 -  2 apps
• $5.99  – 1 apps
• $7.99  – 1 apps
• $9.99 -  2 apps

About the data.
Yes we are looking at making it available and are currently working on packaging it into a report. The data will be aimed at developers looking to build applications and will contain all the necessary due diligence you should do before committing to a project.  As the data involves a great deal of effort there will be a small charge. ETA and more details next week.

Related posts you may like:

1. Augmented Reality iPhone – July Stats
2. Build Mobile Augmented Reality Applications In 1 Hour
3. Augmented Reality iPhone – June Stats
4. Mobile Augmented Reality – The Marmite Problem
5. Defining Augmentedness – What is mobile AR Part I The Camera

Pages: 1 2