News: TeamViewer Adds Support for Smartglasses from Vuzix, Epson, & RealView to Enterprise AR App

Businesses that have adopted enterprise-grade wearables for their workforces now have a new option among the multitude of AR productivity apps that can help their team members communicate in AR.

A well-known brand among IT and help desk technicians, TeamViewer is extending its TeamViewer Pilot AR mode from its mobile apps to Android-based smartglasses from Vuzix, Epson, and RealView.

Like other enterprise AR apps, TeamViewer Pilot enables remote experts to see the camera view of customers or coworkers and annotate their view with drawings and icons. AR is an ideal field for TeamViewer, which gained its customer base by enabling users to share the screen of their desktop or mobile device for troubleshooting.

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"Industrial enterprises or any organization with large customer or field services teams are challenged to have the right person on site to solve immediate problems," said Gautam Goswami, TeamViewer's CMO and head of products in a statement. "With TeamViewer Pilot, your expert can be virtually onsite from anywhere in the world. Now we are adding headset and smartglasses support, so that field workers and service technicians working on complex service, repair, or operational problems can be assisted visually by remote experts while still having both their hands-free to execute guided instructions and resolve issues more quickly — thus greatly improving productivity and customer satisfaction."

In addition to the expanded device base, TeamViewer Pilot 2.0 enables remote experts to start a support session from their Android smartphones and tablets. Previously, this was only possible via Windows, macOS, or iOS devices. The new version of TeamViewer Pilot also improves upon video and image quality, upping the framerate while reducing the necessary bandwidth.

The new features are available now for mobile phones via an update from the App Store and Google Play, while the smartglasses app is available as a side-loadable APK through the TeamViewer website.

While the apps themselves are free, the service is not. Each technician license for TeamViewer Pilot runs $39.00 per month. However, considering the cost of sending a technician to a customer or branch office, or the inefficiency of trying to explain complex processes without visual indicators, the investment may be well worth the cost for some businesses.

The roster of enterprise AR apps and platforms is loaded with heavy-hitters and five-tool players, with Microsoft, Atheer, and Scope AR among the big names in the field.

While TeamViewer is relatively new to the segment, the company's brand name recognition, particularly with IT professionals, immediately makes it a major competitor, if it's technical chops are up to snuff. The expanded support for AR wearables serves to strengthen its stance among its entrenched competitors.