For the customer, it’s a fun way to get better service, deals, and other benefits. For the retailer, it’s a wealth of new information they can use in their sales funnels.
An augmented reality app. The customer points it at different items in the store and immediately gets extra information about it: reviews of other shoppers, how many “loyalty points” will he get for buying it, is there a special deal on it only for loyal customers (or only for him based on his profile), what are similar items that he might be interested in, etc. This is very similar to shopping online in that the customer is constantly giving the retailer feedback by every action they take, every item the seem interested in. It brings the benefits of online shopping to both the customer and retailer.
Use the real world to imagine a different one.
An augmented reality app that allows you to apply real-time filters to the camera video stream and create a strange looking world from the real world around you. You can change the colors, contrast, shapes, by moving sliders on screen. When you are satisfied, you can take snapshots or record a video of your strange new world and share it online.
You are on a trip with your kids. Teo problems you have: 1. The kids are constantly on their smartphone. 2. They are not all that interested in where you are and the interesting things to see there (monuments, museums, etc.)
Create games for specific cities and points of interest that use the kids’ smartphone to play, while walking through the city. Use the phone’s location and camera to add activities to the games, like finding and discovering things, solve puzzles, collect stuff, etc. At the same time, they’ll learn a lot about the place while having fun.
If you walk almost anywhere, you will see plaques celebrating and informing you of interesting people and facts regarding many places (buildings, parks, etc.) There are much more of these than you see on these plaques and many a place where there is no plaque even though it has an interesting history.
An augmented reality app that when pointed at such a place gives you a list of all the interesting things that happened. Famous people who lived there, historical events, etc. You just point it at a building or even a few buildings, or a whole park, and see the list pops up on the screen beside the place you point at. You can them click on any of these to get many more details and the story.
You are stuck. You need (but don’t know how) to replace the doorknob, or the air conditioning unit’s filter, etc.
An app that uses the smartphone’s camera to identify the object you are dealing with, and shows you layered on the video feed from the camera how to do the task you need.