SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Wednesday unveiled tools to make augmented reality apps for mobile devices using the Android operating system, setting up its latest showdown with Apple鈥檚 iPhone over next-generation smartphone features.
Phone-based augmented reality (AR), in which digital objects are superimposed onto the real world on screen, got a huge boost from the popularity of the Pok茅mon Go game. The game, launched in the US in July last year, sent players into city streets, offices, parks and restaurants to search for colorful animated characters.
Analysts expected the game to make $3 billion for Apple over two years as gamers buy 鈥淧ok茅Coins鈥� from its app store.
Google鈥檚 take on the technology will first be available on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Google鈥檚 own Pixel phone. The company said in a blog post that it hoped to make the system, called ARCore, available to at least 100 million users, but did not set a date for a broad release.
Apple in June announced a similar system called ARKit that it plans to release this fall on 鈥渉undreds of millions鈥� of devices.
Google and Apple will jockey for the attention of customers and software developers who will build the games, walking guides and other applications that would make AR a compelling feature.
Many tech industry leaders envision a future in which eyeglasses, car windshields and other surfaces can overlay digital information on the real world. Google and Microsoft have already experimented with AR glasses.
鈥淎R is big and profound,鈥� Apple chief executive Tim Cook told investors earlier in August. 鈥淎nd this is one of those huge things that we鈥檒l look back at and marvel on the start of it.鈥�
Apple and Google have had to make compromises to bring the technology to market.
In Apple鈥檚 case, the Cupertino, California-based company decided to make its AR system work with devices capable of running iOS 11, its next-generation operating system due out this fall.
This means it will work on phones going back to the iPhone 6s, which have a single camera at the back and standard motion sensors, rather than a dual camera system found on newer models such as the iPhone 7 Plus or special depth-sensing chips in competing phones. That limits the range of images that can be displayed.
Google initially aimed to solve this problem with an AR system called Tango that uses a special depth-sensor, but only two phone makers so far support it. With ARCore, Google changed course to work on phones without depth sensors.
But the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem presents challenges. To spread its AR system beyond the Galaxy S8 and Pixel phone, Google will have to figure out how account for the wide variety of Android phone cameras or require phone makers to use specific parts.