IBM announced that their “Seer” Augmented Reality application that they first introduced last year at Wimbeldon is now available for the Australian Open 2010.

The problem though is the fact that it is only available on the Android operating system which has a very low penetration rate in Australia. So how useful will it really be?

According to the Seer Application introduced last year the features of the application basically include:

IBM’s “Seer” in action at Wimbledon (Credit: IBM)

“….points of interest throughout the tennis grounds which have been plotted using GPS. By making use of the T-Mobile G1’s digital compass and precise GPS coordinates, the application offers a ‘heads up display’ to show the user what they are looking at. It augments this with other live data from the scoring systems and IBM scouts reporting from around the grounds, to give the user a comprehensive and dynamic insight into their surroundings. For instance, pointing the camera lens towards a court will not only identify the court number, but also display details about the current and subsequent matches.

Seer Android users can also use the phones’ Map view, which pinpoints their location on a detailed map of the grounds, and can be used as a way finder. The Timeline view is an aggregation of news feeds and updates from IBM scouts, and allows users to see in real-time what is happening around the site. And a handy ‘Radar’ function indicates the user’s current position and nearby points of interest within range.”

What is unfortunate is the fact that by limiting this application to the Android OS, it extremely limits the amount of people that can use the application. According to November 2009 report from AdMob, 88% of Android traffic in the AdMob network was generated in the US. The UK was with second largest market with 4% of requests. This means requests from a usage standpoint from Australia falls somewhere underneath the 4% penetration.

Nonetheless, it is another step forward for AR applications for devices other than the Apple iPhone. Feel free to view the demo video below

Video Demo