Augmented reality (AR) mobile gaming apps will generate 420 million annual downloads by 2019, according to data from analytics firm Juniper Research.

It’s a sharp rise from the 30 million seen last year in 2014, and one that Juniper attributes to a surge in interest in Head Mounted Devices (HMDs) for the home – such as Microsoft’s Hololens and Oculus. 

Out of the rut

However, the research notes that the AR “app market has stagnated somewhat” over the past two years “with the industry struggling to move past AR tools” and building apps to compel consumers.

Juniper also found that mobile devices are struggling to cope with graphic-intensive AR applications.

Bottlenecks in the object tracking and image rendering pipeline are inhibiting the technology from progressing.

The question of how the Hololens might affect gaming was one that we put to our Mobile Mavens last month, asking whether the device had helped augmented reality overtake virtual reality in the gamer interest race.