A survey of more than 600 mobile developers recently conducted by Evans Data shows that augmented reality (AR) is currently being incorporated in some form into apps from 44% of mobile developers, whereas the other 30% are assessing or testing the technology in their piloting and prototyping projects.

The survey reveals 35.3% of the developers citing lack of awareness of the potential of AR among the general public as a major challenge, while 25% stating the same lack of awareness within their organisation. On the other hand, 15% mentioned lack of tools specific to AR as the biggest challenge and 5% said that a lack of expertise was their biggest issue. The hardware part is considered while developing AR and VR apps.

When asking the developers, a little more than a third said they are were mainly working on output devices, whereas 23% are focused on optimising for CPUs/GPUsd/ICs as these type of apps are typically highly compute intensive.

At the IFA 2017, Huawei CEO Richard Yu, in his presentation, introduced the Kirin 970 processor, which is the first of its kind to incorporate AI into a chip. This chip will be available on the Huawei Mate 10 series of smartphones. Sony too introduced its new line of Xperia smartphones featuring the Motion-Eye camera that is capable of capturing 960 frames per-second video as well as anticipate action or smiles for photos. The camera is also capable of continually focusing on subjects as they move through a space. David Levine, CEO of DigitalBridge, said: “Augmented reality hasn’t really caught the public’s attention as much as virtual reality, thanks to its popularity in the gaming and leisure industry.”