Travel publisher Lonely Planet will on Wednesday embed augmented reality features in to new, Android versions of its mobile city guide apps, overlaying place-of-interest information on pictures seen through travelers’ cellphone cameras.
Lonely Planet launched five Android travel guide apps for U.S. cities, incorporating augmented reality technology from the Wikitude app, in beta in October. Now the publisher is debuting more apps, on a public basis, for half of the 50-plus main city destinations it covers.
“This is a way of us testing the Android Marketplace,” Lonely Planet’s innovation ecosystems manager Matthew Cashmore tells paidContent:UK. “There is potential here. We have 25 guides — if things go well, we will roll out the rest.”
Guides are priced at $4.99, in dollars even in non-U.S. markets, because it is onerous to deduct tax from Android Marketplace downloads outside of America, Cashmore said. Lonely Planet is doing a revenue share from app revenue with Wikitude app developer Mobilizy.
The Android betas have shifted an average 1,000 a week with no search listings or marketing push. “It