Once iOS 11 becomes available later this fall, IKEA customers will get an app that is useful, fun and easy to use. An app that helps IKEA customers to visualise what IKEA products will look like in their own homes, before buying the products.
“This technology makes it easier to make buying decisions in your own home, get inspired and try many different products, styles and colours in real-life settings with the swipe of your finger. I think that augmented reality and virtual reality will be a total game changer for retail in the same way as the internet. Only this time, it will be much faster, and accessible to billions of customers using iPhone and iPad”, says Michael Valdsgaard, Leader Digital Transformation at Inter IKEA Systems.
Apple’s advanced technology allowed IKEA to gain speed in the development of new innovative tools for our customers. We want to continue to build on the positive experience of augmented reality that we have gained through the IKEA Catalogue app “Place in your room”. Apple’s hardware and software platforms provide the stability needed to create a great AR experience. And their new platform available with iOS 11, ARKit, has solved critical technical hurdles that help make AR a more accessible tool for real-life decision making.
The collaboration was presented at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference on 5 June 2017 and at the IKEA Democratic Design Days on 7 June. The new augmented reality app will be available in fall 2017.
