Mapbox, the mapping and location platform for developers, is deepening its focus on innovation in augmented reality with the acquisition of Fitness AR, the augmented reality tracking app. Mapbox which is in a period expansion will join the talent of the two companies to create practical AR applications in verticals such as travel, weather, sports and others, according to the press release announcing the acquisition.
The Fitness AR team that includes creator Adam Debreczeni will lead a growing Mapbox team of talented designers and developers to spur further innovation of the app that was launched just this past September. Working together with his co-founder Eric Florenzano, Debreczeni will take the knowledge of building consumer applications for AR and VR to help build new experiences using Mapbox’s flexible location platform.
“This is about building interactive experiences. AR is going to be bigger than the browser and bigger than mobile,” said Eric Gundersen, CEO of Mapbox. “The addition of Adam and Eric accelerates our play of building a world class team of designers and developers rooted in the future of AR. Not only is this critical to games and mobile apps, but also will enhance our AR guided navigation and enterprise data visualizations.”
Mapbox founded in 2010 provides a global map, real-time traffic, location search and navigation via APIs and SDKs. The company touts clients who are industry leaders such as SnapChat, CNN, General Electric, IBM, Instacart, Lonely Planet, Mastercard, Tableau and The Weather Channel. Serving as the foundation for other platforms, Mapbox enables a broad range of activities that includes enterprises analyze their data, drone companies publish flyovers, real estate sites visualize properties and satellite companies process cloud-free imagery.
Fitness AR was the first mapping AR app, allowing Strava equipment users to connect their accounts and visualize their runs, hikes and bike rides on a 3D terrain map in AR on an iPhone or iPad. This was created through use of Unity Maps SDK and Apple’s ARKit. The app was featured by Apple as one of the top apps in this new category. Most important, Fitness AR showed that maps and location data on an everyday mobile device is readily possible.
“Designing augmented reality experiences for applications is still a very nascent field, requiring new tools and new thinking,” said Adam Debreczeni, co-founder of Fitness AR. “With the Unity Maps SDK, Mapbox is the leader in the exciting new space of AR and location. It’s thrilling to join the company at this stage to help build a team and show the world what’s possible if you mix real-time location data and AR.”
