To own an AR future, Niantic wants to build a smarter map of the world
Niantic is continuing to bet heavily on the idea that it knows where consumer computing is headed, namely toward augmented reality.
A report from the firm suggests that the title has pulled in more than $1 billion in revenue since the start of the year, a marked increase since 2019 that might be surprising, given the social effects of a pandemic. Those revenues have allowed Niantic to be one of the more active acquirers in the AR infrastructure space, buying up small buzzy AR startups like Escher Reality, Matrix Mill and, most recently, 6D.ai.
Since the acquisition, Niantic has been integrating the tech into their developer platform and has been aiming to juice the technology with their own advances in semantic understanding so they can not only quickly gather what the geometry of a space looks like, but also peer into the context of what the objects are that make up that 3D mesh.
The ultimate goal of this data collection, the startup says, is to build an ever-updating 3D map of the world
As users gain access to more advanced tech like the lidar sensor inside the new iPhone 12 Pro, it’s likely that Niantic will gain access to more quality data themselves.
See the full story https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/11/to-own-an-ar-future-niantic-wants-to-build-a-smarter-map-of-the-world/