Vodafone NZ marketing campaign augments reality

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 October 2011 09:21

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone New Zealand is giving its customers a taste of augmented reality on their mobile phones in a marketing campaign designed to tie in with its sponsorship of the New Zealand Music Awards.

Augmented reality adds additional information to the view of the real world as seen through a cellphone's camera. Earlier this year a senior executive from cellphone chipmaker, Qualcomm, told iTWire that augmented reality was on the verge of becoming a major feature and source of differentiation in the smartphone market.

Since then Microsoft has licensed augmented reality technology from GeoVector to enable it to add augmented reality functions to its mobile devices.

In Vodafone NZ's implementation - claimed to be "the first large scale augmented reality implementation of its kind in New Zealand" - staff in its retail stores have been issued with T-shirts bearing music-related graphics that are recognised by Android and iPhone apps that have been made available for download.

When the app is installed in a phone and its camera pointed at the person wearing the T-shirt, the T-shirt's image appears on the screen of the phone, animated and with accompanying music.

Vodafone developed the app in conjunction with Smudge Apps in Christchurch. A demo of it in action can be seen on YouTube.