Wikitude
| Wikitude | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Augmented reality, Software |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis |
| Headquarters | Salzburg, Austria |
| Notable Personnel | Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis (Founder) |
| Products | Wikitude World Browser, Wikitude SDK, Wikitude Studio |
| Parent | Qualcomm |
| Website | https://www.wikitude.com |
Wikitude was an Austrian Augmented Reality software company based in Salzburg, best known for an early mobile AR browser and for a cross-platform AR software development kit (SDK) that let developers add image recognition, object tracking, markerless tracking, and location-based overlays to their own apps. The company was founded in 2008 by Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis under the name Mobilizy GmbH, later renamed Wikitude GmbH.[1][2]
Its first product, the Wikitude World Browser, launched in October 2008 and was one of the first publicly available applications to use a location-based approach to augmented reality on a mobile phone, overlaying nearby points of interest on the device's camera view.[1][2] From 2012 the company shifted its focus from the consumer app to a developer platform. Qualcomm Technologies acquired Wikitude in 2021 and folded its technology into the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform.[3] The Wikitude SDK and its associated cloud and Studio services were shut down on September 21, 2024.[4]
History
Wikitude World Browser (2008)
Wikitude was founded in 2008 in Salzburg by Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, originally as Mobilizy GmbH.[1][2] The company's first product, the Wikitude World Browser, was released in October 2008 for Android and was one of the earliest mobile applications to combine the phone's camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometers to display location-based information as an overlay on the live camera image. A user could point the phone at the surroundings and see labels for nearby landmarks, places, and other points of interest pulled from online data sources.[1][3] This category of application later became known as an AR browser, and Wikitude was among the products that defined it alongside contemporaries such as Layar.[1]
Shift to a developer SDK (2012)
Over time the company moved away from operating a consumer-facing browser and toward licensing its underlying technology to other developers. In August 2012 Wikitude added image recognition, allowing predefined target images to trigger AR content, and it restructured its offering around the Wikitude SDK so that any developer could embed AR features in their own apps rather than publishing content inside the Wikitude app.[1][4] The SDK combined the original geo-based AR with image-based AR in a single toolkit and supported multiple mobile operating systems.[1]
SLAM, instant tracking, and object recognition (2017)
In 2017 Wikitude released SDK 7, which added markerless tracking built on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The feature, marketed as Instant Tracking, let an app map an environment in real time and place AR content on surfaces without needing a printed marker or predefined target image.[1][5] The same SLAM foundation enabled Object Recognition, which extended tracking from flat images and planar surfaces to three-dimensional objects such as tools, toys, and machinery.[5][1]
Qualcomm acquisition (2021)
Wikitude and Qualcomm began working together in 2019, when Wikitude optimized its AR platform for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 mobile platform. At that point Wikitude described itself as the only AR platform running across iOS, Android, and Windows UWP.[3] On September 23, 2021, Qualcomm Technologies confirmed it had acquired Wikitude for an undisclosed sum, and the deal closed near the end of the third quarter of 2021.[3] Wikitude had about 35 employees at the time of the acquisition.[3] Qualcomm folded Wikitude's image recognition and tracking technology into its broader extended reality plans, including the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform that Qualcomm launched in November 2021 for headworn AR.[3][6]
Wind-down and shutdown (2023 to 2024)
After the acquisition Qualcomm directed new AR development toward Snapdragon Spaces and began winding down the standalone Wikitude SDK. The final SDK release was version 9.14.0 in May 2023.[1] New subscriptions could no longer be purchased after September 21, 2023, and all Wikitude services, including the SDK licensing, the cloud recognition service, and the Wikitude Studio web tool, were shut down on September 21, 2024.[1][4] Wikitude has stated that more than 40,000 mobile apps were built using its technology over the company's lifetime.[4]
Technology
The Wikitude SDK packaged several AR capabilities into one cross-platform toolkit. Its main components are summarized below.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Geo AR | Location-based AR that places content in the world using GPS, compass, and motion sensors; the basis of the original Wikitude World Browser[1][5] |
| Image recognition and tracking | Detects predefined 2D target images and overlays content on them; available offline, with recognition of up to roughly 1,000 stored images on device[1][5] |
| Instant Tracking (SLAM) | Markerless tracking that maps the environment in real time so content can be anchored to surfaces without a target image; introduced with SDK 7 in 2017[1][5] |
| Object recognition and tracking | Recognizes and tracks three-dimensional objects rather than flat images, built on the same SLAM technology[5][1] |
| Multi-target tracking | Recognizes and tracks several image targets in the camera view at the same time[5] |
The SDK ran on iOS, Android, and Windows (UWP), and supported AR on smart glasses in addition to phones and tablets.[3][4] Developers could build either with the native SDKs or through common cross-platform frameworks, including Unity, Apache Cordova (PhoneGap), Xamarin, and Titanium.[1] Wikitude also offered Wikitude Studio, a web tool for managing target images, and a cloud recognition service for matching against large image databases hosted online.[4]
Relevance to AR and VR
Wikitude is part of the early history of mobile augmented reality. The Wikitude World Browser, released in October 2008 on the first Android phone, was one of the first widely available demonstrations that a consumer smartphone could overlay digital information on a live camera view using only its built-in sensors, several years before AR became a standard platform feature.[1][3] Together with Layar, it helped popularize the AR browser concept.[1]
For most of its life the company's significance to AR was as a development toolkit rather than as an end-user product. Before Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore made SLAM-based tracking a built-in part of iOS and Android in 2017, third-party SDKs such as Wikitude and Vuforia were among the main ways developers added image recognition, object tracking, and markerless AR to mobile apps, including on platforms and devices that lacked native AR support.[1][5] Wikitude's emphasis on running the same SDK across iOS, Android, Windows, and smart glasses made it one of the more portable options during that period.[3][4]
The 2021 acquisition tied Wikitude directly to Qualcomm's XR strategy. Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors power a large share of standalone VR and AR headsets, and the company positioned Snapdragon Spaces as a developer platform for headworn AR built on Snapdragon hardware and its perception software. Acquiring Wikitude added established AR recognition and tracking technology, plus a developer base that Wikitude reported at more than 150,000 registered developers, to that effort.[6][4] The standalone Wikitude SDK was retired after the acquisition, with Qualcomm steering AR developers toward Snapdragon Spaces for headset-based experiences.[1][4]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 "Wikitude". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitude.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis". https://www.awexr.com/hall-of-fame/58-philipp-breuss-schneeweis.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 "Qualcomm confirms acquisition of Augmented Reality SDK provider Wikitude". 2021-09-23. https://www.auganix.org/qualcomm-confirms-acquisition-of-augmented-reality-sdk-provider-wikitude/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 "Wikitude Augmented Reality: the World's Leading Cross-Platform AR SDK". https://www.wikitude.com/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 "Object recognition, multi-target tracking and SLAM: Track the world with SDK 7". https://feedreader.com/observe/wikitude.com/blog-object-recognition-multi-target-tracking-hit-testing-slam-track-world-sdk-7%2F%3F+itemId=5717607959.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform Launches to Create Headworn AR Experiences that Adapt to the Spaces Around Us". 2021-11-09. https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/11/snapdragon-spaces-xr-developer-platform-launches-create-headworn-ar.