Login
iscover
Staff Reporter
Mobile technologies and applications are increasingly the norm for real estate companies globally, and “augmented reality” is becoming more popular, a US-based conference focused on real estate technology has heard.
“Augmented reality, a term for a direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are enhanced with computer-generated input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data, is growing in popularity and we will be seeing this technology applied to real estate mobile devices within the next year,” said Harcourts International head of e-Business, Gregg Toyama.
Mr Toyama attended the Real Estate Connect Conference, held in late July in San Francisco, alongside Harcourts International managing director, Mike Green, and chief information officer, Jason Wills.
“What we heard at the conference confirmed that mobile technologies and applications are becoming the standard,” said Mr Wills. “We discovered that applications built for all smartphones and tablets are preferable to apps built for proprietary devices such as the iPhone.”
And while Harcourts had developed these technologies, he said “many of the top real estate companies haven’t started building apps yet.”
“Overall, the clear direction moving forward is all around ‘community’,” Mr Toyama said.
“Lead by the social media evolution, the internet is no longer about web pages, it’s about web people. Connection online is the clear trend, as well as mobile technologies. More online time will be spent on mobile devices such as iPhones and Androids rather than on PCs.”
Newsletter
