You’ve probably heard about Layar and their augmented reality service/platform. We covered them for quite a few times on IntoMobile. The company has a compelling and super-interesting offering, and will probably be one of the leading augmented reality service providers in the future, aside from Google. In that sense, I find them to be an interesting company to acquire.
I believe there are three companies that could benefit from having Layar’s technology (and people) under its belt:
- Microsoft – they certainly want to compete with Google and at the moment I don’t see them succeeding in the long-run.
- Nokia – same goes here. And it’s about time for Nokia to start thinking beyond its incumbent platforms to expand elsewhere.
- Samsung – which us the weakest of the three companies when it comes to services. Adding AR in to the mix could definitely make their bada platform a winner.
Other potential buyers could include LG, Motorola and maybe even Dell, a new player in the mobile world.
Earlier I suggested someone should acquire GyPSii. Maybe the ideal thing would be to buy both companies and merge their respective technologies in something that would create the “mobile location augmented reality social network.” Of course, a shorter name is a must in order to sell such a service. 😉
As a sidenote, another augmented reality company that’s worth watching is metaio which makes the junaio platform, and has just opened it up.
Any thoughts?