Interconnected Realities

8Today's Metaverse‐Adjacent Consumer Augmented Reality

• Purpose: Visually integrating digital information and entertainment with the physical world around us
• Problems Solved: Deeper interactive engagement with content, whether historical, advertising, or factual, such as object dimensions, getting lost, making the invisible visible
• Key Access Method: Smartphones, tablets, PCs, AR glasses
• Contribution to the Wider Metaverse: Digital/physical union, enabling deeper engagement with and understanding of the physical world for both literal and fantastical purposes

At last, we come to the final stop in our survey of the existing types of Metaverse and influential Metaverse‐adjacent experiences that already exist, and that together already form the foundation of what is to come. With consumer augmented reality, we're looking at digital/physical experiences that are both asynchronous and occur in real time, staying in that left‐hand column of Figure 7.1 that we started exploring in the enterprise Metaverse. Most of these happen on smartphones and/or tablets, although we'll also see some PC and early AR glasses usage as well. None are immersive by definition – in AR, the physical world is always present.

The AR consumer experience is already very widespread and commonly used, driven by visual filters on smartphones. In their 2022 Q3 earnings call, Snap revealed that 250 million users, or nearly 70% of their customer base, activate an AR experience each day.¹ While Metaverse‐adjacent, ...