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Metaio

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Metaio
Information
Industry Augmented reality, computer vision
Founded February 2003
Founder Thomas Alt, Peter Meier
Headquarters Munich, Germany
Notable Personnel Thomas Alt (CEO), Peter Meier (CTO)
Products Metaio SDK, Metaio Creator, Junaio, Metaio Cloud, AREngine
Parent Apple (from May 2015)
Website http://www.metaio.com (defunct)


Metaio (Metaio GmbH, styled metaio in its early branding) was a German augmented reality (AR) and computer vision software company based in Munich. It was founded in February 2003 by Thomas Alt and Peter Meier, grew out of an early project with Volkswagen, and made AR development tools, authoring software and the mobile AR browser Junaio.[1][2]

Apple bought the company in May 2015. A legal document reported by TechCrunch showed a transfer of Metaio shares to Apple on 21 or 22 May 2015, and VentureBeat cited documents dated 22 May on the German states' Common Register Portal. Apple gave only its standard statement that it "buys smaller technology companies from time to time".[3][4] Metaio stopped selling its products after the deal, and the Junaio browser's channels were switched off on 15 December 2015.[5][6]

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Every cited source reopened (archived Metaio pages and press releases, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, MacRumors, The Next Web, Engadget); founding, founders, product dates, company claims, acquisition timing and the 2015 shutdown dates checked. About review dates.

History

Origins and early products (2003-2008)

Metaio's own history page says the company began with a project for Volkswagen and that the founders then used a German government grant to bootstrap the business. Thomas Alt became CEO and Peter Meier CTO.[1] A 2012 company fact sheet dated its AR research back to 1999 and described Metaio as a privately held software company founded in 2003.[7] Metaio said in 2015 that it had first sold AR to the industrial and automotive sectors, for product design and factory planning.[8]

In 2005 the company released KPS Click & Design, which let users place virtual furniture into an image of a room; Metaio called it the first AR application for end consumers. It then released the Unifeye platform so that other firms could build commercial AR solutions. In 2006 it released a browser plug-in for web-based AR applications. A mobile AR app and print and web campaigns followed.[1]

Junaio and the developer platform (2009-2012)

Metaio launched Junaio as an iPhone application and companion website on 11 November 2009. Users could attach notes, web links, images, virtual objects and Twitter accounts to views of the real world and share them on the Junaio site or on Facebook. TechCrunch noted that European startups Layar and Wikitude already offered similar AR browsers.[9] On 6 December 2009, at the AR Development Camp in Mountain View, Meier announced an open Junaio API so outside developers could publish their own content and games on the platform. The same release said Metaio had offices in San Francisco, Munich and Seoul and more than 160 customers, among them BMW, Daimler, Siemens, Toyota, LEGO and Volkswagen.[2] Junaio 2.0 reached the App Store in March 2010 with indoor use, information channels and the open API.[10] A closed developer beta for Android, with natural feature tracking, followed in April 2010.[11]

According to the company, it won the ISMAR tracking competition in 2011 with a mobile 3D tracking solution.[1] Its 2012 fact sheet listed more than 75 employees at two locations in Germany and the United States and more than 500 business customers.[7] By October 2012 Metaio said it employed more than 85 people, with headquarters in Munich and the subsidiary Metaio Inc. in San Francisco. It also said that over 300 million magazines and catalogs printed in 2012 carried AR content powered by its technology, including titles from the Bauer Media Group.[12]

AREngine, wearables and depth sensors (2013-2014)

On 21 February 2013 Metaio announced the AREngine, hardware intellectual property (IP) for accelerating AR on mobile processors. Under a deal with ST-Ericsson, the AREngine was to be built into ST-Ericsson's mobile platforms. Metaio promised "60 times faster initialization" than AR apps on existing platforms, and Meier said the AREngine would "do for augmented reality what the GPU did years ago for the gaming industry".[13][14]

In September 2013 Volkswagen and Metaio announced MARTA (Mobile Augmented Reality Technical Assistance), an iPad app the two companies developed for service technicians working on the limited-edition Volkswagen XL1. It overlays labels and step-by-step repair instructions on the camera view of the car.[15]

At CES in January 2014, Metaio announced plans to integrate its 3D tracking software into the Intel RealSense SDK. At that point it said 65,000 developers were using its AR platform.[16] In May 2014 it published research on "Thermal Touch", a prototype pairing an infrared camera with a standard camera. The prototype detected the heat a finger leaves on a surface, so any surface could act as a touch screen for a wearable AR headset. Metaio called it "far from everyday usability" and showed it at the 2014 Augmented World Expo.[17]

In August 2014 Metaio released "Junaio Mirage", a version of Junaio for the Epson Moverio BT-200 smart glasses. It ran in see-through mode, so content was drawn directly into the wearer's view instead of onto a camera feed, and Metaio said it was the first AR browser in the Moverio BT-200 app market.[18] In October 2014 the company announced that Metaio SDK 6.0 would accept input from RGB-D depth sensing cameras such as Occipital's Structure Sensor. It said depth data would remove the need for markers in many cases and help with occlusion of virtual objects.[19] Alt and Meier introduced the Metaio 6 platform at InsideAR Munich in late October 2014. In the company's press release on the conference, Alt said more than 110,000 developers were using the Metaio SDK and that Metaio's overall market share had reached 40%.[20]

Acquisition by Apple (2015)

Metaio's "at a glance" page in May 2015 claimed more than 140,000 developers and more than 50,000 published apps.[8] According to TechCrunch, the company had 1,000 customers and 150,000 users in 30 countries. It had not taken traditional Silicon Valley venture capital, but had raised money from Atlantic Bridge and Westcott.[3]

In May 2015 Metaio cancelled its user conference in San Francisco, took down its Twitter accounts and posted a notice that it would no longer sell products or subscriptions; email technical support was to end on 30 June. TechCrunch then reported a legal document showing that the startup's shares had been transferred to Apple on 21 or 22 May.[3] VentureBeat reported that documents dated 22 May on the German states' Common Register Portal showed the purchase, and that Apple did not immediately respond to its request for comment.[4] AppleInsider reported that Apple's plans for Metaio and its staff were unclear.[21] Metaio's remaining support page said active cloud subscriptions would run until they expired, and that downloads of earlier purchases, the developer portal and the helpdesk would stay available until 15 December 2015.[5] The Junaio site said channel publishing had ended and that existing channels would remain available until 15 December 2015.[6]

Products

Product Introduced Description
KPS Click & Design 2005 Consumer application for placing virtual furniture into a photo of a room[1]
Unifeye platform After 2005 Platform for third parties to build commercial AR solutions[1]
Junaio 2009 Free mobile AR browser and content platform for iOS and later Android; channel publishing ended in 2015 and existing channels were available until 15 December 2015[9][12][6]
Metaio SDK By 2012 Modular framework with capturing, sensor interface, rendering and tracking components; in 2015 it supported development on Windows PC, Mac OS and in Unity, with deployment to iOS, Android and Windows PC; version 6.0 added depth sensor input in 2014[12][5][19]
Metaio Creator By 2012 Drag-and-drop AR authoring tool for print media and other content; the 2012 version cost US$595 for a one-time license (free version available) on Windows, with a Mac version promised for December 2012[12][5]
Metaio AR Creator Plugin for Adobe InDesign 2014 Plugin for building and rating tracking markers and adding AR page layers inside InDesign, with deployment through Junaio or as a standalone app[22]
AREngine 2013 (announced) Hardware acceleration IP for AR, to be integrated into ST-Ericsson mobile platforms[14]
Metaio Cloud, Metaio CVS, Metaio Suite By 2015 Metaio Cloud hosted and delivered content made with Creator and the SDK; Continuous Visual Search (CVS) was a cloud image-matching service for large sets of 2D tracking images; Metaio Suite bundled the products[5]

XR work

Most of Metaio's work was camera-based AR on phones and tablets. That covered industrial and automotive uses such as factory planning and service manuals, marketing and print media, and tourism. One example was the 2014 Timetraveler app with Timetraveler Augmented, a GPS and optical tracking tour of eleven historical sites at the Berlin Wall Memorial.[8][15][23] Ferrari used Metaio's platform for an AR showroom application, according to MacRumors.[24]

The company also worked on head-worn AR: the Junaio Mirage see-through edition for Epson's glasses, and the Thermal Touch prototype for future wearable headsets.[18][17] It also ran InsideAR, an annual AR conference in Munich. The eighth edition in 2014 recorded 1,100 visitors, and 3D cameras and smart glasses from manufacturers including Epson, Seebright, Vuzix, Oculus Rift and Google were on show. Metaio said InsideAR conferences were planned for 2015 in San Francisco, Beijing, Tokyo and Munich.[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Company - The metaio Story". Metaio. 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130621021951/http://www.metaio.com/about/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "junaio opens up its API to developers". Metaio. 2009-12-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20091229081512/http://www.metaio.com/fileadmin/homepage/Presse/Dokumente/Pressemitteilungen/English/E_2009_12_07_junaio_open_API.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Ron Miller, Josh Constine (2015-05-28). "Apple Acquires Augmented Reality Company Metaio". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Jordan Novet (2015-05-28). "Apple has acquired augmented reality company Metaio". VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/28/apple-has-acquired-augmented-reality-company-metaio/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Product Support". Metaio. 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150810105628/https://www.metaio.com/product_support.html. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Junaio - Augmented Reality Browser". Junaio. 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151104103857/http://www.junaio.com/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Company - Making the Digital a Natural Experience". Metaio. 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120116110539/http://www.metaio.com/company/company/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "About - Metaio at a Glance". Metaio. 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150513214636/http://www.metaio.com/about.1.html. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Junaio launches augmented reality platform for the iPhone and the Web". TechCrunch. 2009-11-11. https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/metaio-junaio-augmented-reality-platform/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  10. ↑ "junaio 2.0 - now in App Store". Metaio. 2010-03-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20100314045415/http://www.metaio.com/media-press/press-release/junaio-20. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  11. ↑ "junaio for Android - Mobile AR Browser with Natural Feature Tracking". Metaio. 2010-04-28. https://web.archive.org/web/20100608100024/http://www.metaio.com/media-press/press-release/junaio-on-android. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 "Metaio upgrades augmented reality Creator tool for Design, Publishing Industries". Metaio. 2012-10-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20121202173948/http://www.metaio.com/fileadmin/upload/documents/pdf/press_release/REL-creator_2_0-2012.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  13. ↑ Jay Donovan (2013-02-21). "Metaio Develops First Chipset To Improve Augmented Reality Performance In Mobiles". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/21/metaio-develops-first-chipset-to-improve-augmented-reality-performance-in-mobiles/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Nick Summers (2013-02-21). "Metaio partners with ST-Ericsson to create world's first augmented reality chipset for smartphones". The Next Web. https://thenextweb.com/news/metaio-partners-with-st-ericsson-to-build-new-always-on-ar-processors-for-smartphones. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Nicole Lee (2013-10-01). "Volkswagen develops augmented reality service manual for the XL1". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2013-10-01-volkswagen-augmented-reality-ipad-manual-xl1.html. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  16. ↑ "Metaio to integrate 3D Augmented Reality into Intel RealSense Computing SDK". Metaio. 2014-01-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20141107163044/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/metaio-to-integrate-3d-augmented-reality-into-intel/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Metaio unveils thermal imaging R&D for future use in wearable augmented reality headsets". Metaio. 2014-05-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20140913121456/http://www.metaio.com/fileadmin/upload/documents/pdf/press_release/REL-thermal-touch-EN.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Metaio Launches Junaio AR Browser for Epson Moverio BT-200 Data Glasses". Metaio. 2014-08-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20140901185633/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/metaio-launches-junaio-ar-browser-for-epson-moverio-bt-200-data-glasses/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Metaio Unveils 3D Depth Sensor Support for Augmented Reality". Metaio. 2014-10-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20141026092740/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/Metaio-Unveils-3D-Depth-Sensor-Support-for-Augmented-Reality/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 "Augmented Reality for Uses in Virtual Shopping up to Industry 4.0 - Over 1000 people attended the 8th InsideAR Conference". Metaio. 2014-11-07. https://web.archive.org/web/20150322162140/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/augmented-reality-for-virtual-shopping-up-to-industry-40-over-1000-people-attended-the-8th-insidear-conference/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  21. ↑ "Apple buys established augmented reality firm Metaio". AppleInsider. 2015-05-28. https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/28/apple-buys-established-augmented-reality-firm-metaio. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  22. ↑ "Metaio Launches Augmented Reality Creator for Adobe InDesign". Metaio. 2014-10-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20141006171612/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/metaio-launches-augmented-reality-creator-for-adobe-indesign/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  23. ↑ "Augmented Reality Provides Window into the Past with Berlin Wall Timetraveler App". Metaio. 2014-09-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20141016203637/http://www.metaio.com/about/press/press-release/2014/augmented-reality-provides-window-into-the-past-with-berlin-wall-time-traveler-app/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  24. ↑ Juli Clover (2015-05-28). "Apple Purchases Augmented Reality Startup Metaio". MacRumors. https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/28/apple-purchases-metaio-for-augmented-reality/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
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