Market Reality: Business Position Themselves in Augmented Reality Market with Hires and Joint Ventures

Business Position Themselves in Augmented Reality Market with Hires and Joint Ventures

Augmented reality sells, but who's buying? Over the past week, two companies made executive hires to capitalize on the growth of augmented reality as a service to sell to other businesses. Meanwhile, two companies joined forces to offer augmented reality tools to headset makers and content providers.

Zappar Hires Sales Exec to Expand North American Presence

Mobile augmented reality developer Zappar has added Keith Curtin as their vice president of sales for the Eastern US.

The hire augments the company's sales presence in North America, with offices established in San Francisco and Boston to pursue opportunities in the surrounding regions.

A sales veteran with a wide breadth of media experience, Curtin has an extensive background in augmented reality. Prior to joining Zappar, Curtin founded See Digital, a consulting firm specializing in augmented, virtual, and mixed reality. In addition, he has previously served as a business development executive for another mobile augmented reality firm, Blippar.

"Keith's experience in the space is close to unmatched as he's already spent several years working with brands not only to test but roll-out innovative and successful consumer marketing campaigns rooted in AR. As we move into our own accelerated growth phase, we're thrilled to have Keith on board," said Caspar Thykier, CEO of Zappar, in a news release.

TeleTech Appoints Product Marketing Exec to Explore Emerging Technology

Customer experience firm TeleTech has brought former Microsoft executive Jeff Marcoux aboard as their vice president of product marketing.

Marcoux will oversee development of customer experience solutions with emerging technologies for TeleTech, a company known for their contact center services.

"With the goal of helping clients deliver service experiences that accelerate acquisition, growth, retention and affinity, he will be focused on innovations in omnichannel contextual knowledge management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality," said Kyle Priest, TeleTech's chief strategy and marketing officer, in a statement.

Imagination Park and InterKnowlogy Join Forces as XENOHolographic

Digital content production company Imagination Park and app developer InterKnowlogy have formed a joint venture to develop software, services, and content for augmented and mixed reality.

Dubbed XENOHolographic, the venture's flagship product is XENOSidekick, a software suite that enables headset makers, content providers, and advertisers to deliver consistent holographic interactions.

Among the capabilities InterKnowlogy brings to the XENOHolographic joint venture with Imagination Park is a mixed reality auto showcase app for use with HoloLens. Image via InterKnowlogy

"I feel we are years ahead of the industry when it comes to interactive holographic experiences. Delivering interactive holographic content is not a trivial issue for Augmented & Mixed Reality headsets. These tools provide AR/MR technology seamlessly, making the creation of interactive experiences much simpler. Our mission is to become the single, industry-leading, worldwide platform for interactive holographic experiences," said Tim Huckaby, Chairman of InterKnowlogy and Co-Founder of XENOHolographic in a statement.

Every Friday, Next Reality reviews the latest headlines from the financial side of augmented and mixed reality. This weekly Market Reality column covers funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions, market analysis, and the like. Check out previous editions of Market Reality for more news you may have missed.

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Cover image via Zappar/Vimeo

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