During Tim Cook’s surprise visit to Toronto he attended a demo at Shopify to see the company’s augmented reality capabilities in the e-commerce space, and how the company will develop AR shopping. (via Financial Post).
AR Shopping
Shopify showed off three AR-specific demos to Tim Cook, and said it’s developing these for its 500,000+ merchants. The highlight of the visit was a VR/AR combo where a developer and Tim used an iPad to interact with another employee as he acted as a merchant in VR.
I’m a big fan of Shopify. I love the fact that their focus is on democratizing technology for entrepreneurs that are largely artisans and bringing their products to market so that these merchants can focus on what they are great at.
Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütke said the company planned to use ARKit to become the biggest AR-enabled e-commerce platform. The goal is to give small businesses the latest in technological advances.
What Shopify then can do is that we know this is going to happen, we can establish some patterns, and we can get this productized to the point where it’s going to be a single clink for every store.
Augmented reality is heating up and will get bigger and bigger. Shopping and entertainment will probably be its biggest areas of focus.