Games/Interactive
Apple’s Cook: Company Bullish on Augmented Reality (MESA)
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Apple has been one of the main beneficiaries of the success of the augmented reality (AR) mobile game “Pokemon Go” so far and the company is bullish on AR’s possibilities, CEO Timothy Cook said July 26 on Apple’s earnings call for the third quarter ended June 25. The game is played on iOS and Android mobile devices, and Apple and Google each get a cut of the money made off the game. “We are high on AR for the long run,” Cook said. “It’s incredible what has happened” with “Pokemon Go,” he told analysts, adding: “I think it’s a testament to what happens with innovative apps and the whole ecosystem and the power of being a developer being able to press a button, so to speak, and offer their product around the world.”
The game’s developer, Niantic, “has elected not to go worldwide yet because of the pressure on their servers, et cetera, because of the demand. But I’m sure that they will over time,” Cook predicted.
The game’s success also shows that AR “can be really great, and we have been and continue to invest a lot in this,” he said, adding: “There are great things for customers” that are possible with AR and it represents a “great commercial opportunity.” But “the number one thing is to make sure our products work well” with products like the Pokemon game, regardless of the developer, he said.
Asked by an analyst if he believed there will be an industry-wide computing shift to AR on a long-term basis, Cook said: “I notice people that want to call it a new computer platform, and we’ll see. I think there’s a tendency in this industry to call everything new, the next computer platform. However, that said, I think AR can be huge. So we’ll see whether it’s the next platform. But regardless, it will be huge.”
Also on the call, Cook said we should think of Apple TV, the launch of Apple tvOS and what’s coming out this fall as “building the foundation for what we believe can be a broader business over time” for Apple. “I don’t want to be more precise than that. But you shouldn’t look at what’s there today and think we’ve done what we want to do. We’ve built a foundation that we can do something bigger off of.”
