PTC Launches Vuforia Instruct

Today at the Vuforia Live Virtual Event, PTC launches Vuforia Instruct, an AR-powered work instruction publishing and viewing application. Delivered as a cloud-hosted application, Vuforia Instruct is available through the PTC Atlas SaaS platform, announced in the LiveWorx 2020 conference. 

Aimed at developers, PTC Atlas is also home to Onshape, the popular cloud-hosted CAD modeler; Vuforia Expert Capture; and Creo Generative Design extension.

“Vuforia Instruct enables organizations to transform the way they create and scale work instructions to their front-line employees,” said Michael Campbell, Executive VP and GM of Augmented Reality Products, PTC. “Leveraging existing 3D CAD data, organizations can now guide employees to exactly where work needs to be done and provide them with detailed instructions for critical inspection procedures in context. Such enhancements are critical to industrial organizations looking to increase productivity, improve quality, and reduce unplanned downtime.”

Vuforia Instruct includes CAD-based AR content creation tools, integrated analysis and reporting, and real-time communication via tablet and handheld devices. The software will be part of the Vuforia enterprise AR suite, which includes Vuforia Studio, Vuforia Expert Capture, Vuforia Engine, and other products. 

Greenlight Insights, an analyst firm specializing in the AR/VR market, estimates that the AR Task Guidance market will reach $3.5 billion by 2025. “PTC in particular has many advantages that differentiate it from competitors in the AR Task Guidance space,” said J.C. Kuang, Managing Director and Principal Analyst at Greenlight Insights. “Firstly, they have a foothold in verticals which are expected to drive the most demand in the short term, including manufacturing and predictive industrial maintenance. Secondly, the Vuforia suite is well-integrated within PTC's ecosystem of other products, most notably its PLM and CAD products. Because of this, they are able to maximize their total addressable market by leveraging their large global partner network; in this way, AR becomes an up-sell and value-add for existing clients.”

PTC's AR-focused Vuforia Division came into existence when PTC acquired the business from Qualcomm's Connected Experiences Division in 2015. Four years later in 2019, PTC acquired Onshape, signaling its faith in cloud-hosted products.

With Vuforia Instruct, PTC joins the growing AR-based content creation and delivery market, competing with other players such as Epson with its Epson Moverio Assist and RealWear with its RealWear HTM. The trend represents an upgrade from the tablet-powered applications for creating and displaying work instructions and field manuals. 

“As we've seen over the last few years, enterprise applications for frontline workers continue to be the most compelling market for both hardware and software providers,” Kuang observed. “Companies like Magic Leap and Bose tried and failed to find a market in consumer products despite their impressive technology stacks. And only now are we seeing potentially scalable consumer-oriented deployments from major stakeholders like Snapchat. Ultimately, the fact that PTC has recognized a market need for a product like Vuforia Instruct speaks to a significant milestone in market maturity.”