Augmented Reality – Stakeholders of a new technology

Penguins leading you from Ikebukuro Station to Sunshine City? Seeing your new furniture in your living room before even buying it? With the wide diffusion of smartphones and tablets, Augmented Reality (AR) – reality enhanced by digital content – has become accessible for an increasing number of people. Although AR is not new, the prospects of utilizing it on a larger scale certainly are. With more and more companies such as IKEA or Starbucks using AR, it is starting to become part of our daily life and will most likely change the perception of our living environment in the future.

Amid the general discourse of access to information, privacy and data protection, Augmented Reality emerges, rendering these questions more relevant than ever. Against this backdrop, it will be a matter of vital importance to understand which companies take the lead for what reasons in adopting AR, and what strategies and goals they pursue.

This PhD project aims at identifying the most important stakeholders and at investigating their chief motives and their impact on AR within Japan, using stakeholder and network analysis. My talk will focus on a case study of “Metaio – The Augmented Reality Company” a major player active in the field of Japanese AR applications. I will introduce the company’s applications and strategies, its partners, and position it within the Japanese AR framework.

Sarah Jacoby, currently a scholarship fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), is a PhD Candidate at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany. She holds a master’s degree in Information Science, Japanese Studies and Political Science from the same institution.