Augmented reality trends for 2023

The market consulting firm Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global augmented reality market will grow from $6120 million in 2021 to $97.76 billion in 2028. This technology, easily applicable in sectors as diverse as healthcare, sports, and museums, will continue to be discussed in the coming months. In this article, we have compiled some of the augmented reality trends that could be the stars of the global market. Will we see them materialize?

Increase in the number of users and devices

According to Statista, 2022 will close with 1100 million augmented reality devices worldwide, and by 2024 there will be 1700 million. And as early as 2023, global shipments of augmented reality headsets are expected to exceed 30 million units, “over 12 times the number expected to be shipped in 2020.”

These figures show that augmented reality has potential and that applications can be developed to engage a millennial audience attracted to this technology.

Audio and augmented reality

How can audio and augmented reality be combined? Through spatial audio, a surround sound system encircles the augmented reality image in such a way that allows us to ‘know’ where we hear it from according to our position. With this and sound effects, more immersive experiences can be created in which sight and hearing are involved.

Real-time shopping experiences

We have talked on many occasions about how augmented reality helps commerce—for example, allowing us to ‘try on’ virtual furniture in a room or a shirt on our body, in both cases, to see how it looks before buying it.

Now, we will hear more about live shopping and live stream shopping, live broadcasts of e-commerce, which have links to their products.

Company-customer interactivity in this type of experience can be made more attractive by adding augmented reality to make it more surprising and immersive. How does that cosmetic look on a person? The technology simulates it with a filter. And that dress? It is superimposed on the person in a virtual fitting room.

Augmented reality glasses

Although the Oculus and HoloLens have been with us for many years, other development augmented and virtual reality glasses projects could make news in 2023.

The Quest Pro, virtual reality glasses presented by Meta a few months ago for the metaverse (part of the project formerly known as Cambria), will compete with these devices and others, such as HTC‘s glasses, announced in late 2022.

The expansion of WebAR

WebAR is a technology for augmented reality experiences in the web browser. This allows the creation of simple products that do not need an app to run them.

Some analysts believe that the evolution of WebAR may change how we interact with the Internet. For example, to try on a cosmetic, a hairstyle, or a piece of clothing, we would not need to download an app from a brand, but we could do it from Chrome, Edge, or Firefox with the camera of our computer, tablet, and phone.

Cross-platform

The development of cross-platform standards and applications will continue to be a trend in 2023, as in 2022. It would be ideal to have applications available for several platforms of the same quality as those created exclusively for one.

Metaverse and augmented reality again

Like multiplatform environments, the metaverse will continue to be one of the protagonists of 2023. In these virtual worlds, augmented reality can be used as avatars representing us in, for example, a work meeting, a conference, or another type of meeting of people.

In this sense, the objects that users possess in the metaverse, such as NFTs and collectibles, can also be brought, or at least brought closer, to the real world. How? By bringing them into an augmented reality application. Along these lines, Meta announced in mid-2022 that it would test bringing NFTs to Instagram Stories via its Spark AR augmented reality platform.

All these augmented reality trends can make much news in the next twelve months. The technology is attractive for attracting new audiences and building loyalty with existing ones, so it gives ideas to companies looking for disruptive technologies to improve or expand their business. In this sense, 2023 can be a great year to demonstrate their capabilities.