Japanese start up Tonchidot, the company behind the very popular Augmented Reality browser Sekai Camera, has announced a new round of financing totaling $4 million.

The funds were raised from DCM and existing investor ITOCHU Technology Ventures, and will be used to continue development of Tonchidot’s AR products.

This is one of the largest investments in the new mobile AR sector, and indicates that investors are starting to believe the long term value of the technology. Osuke Honda, a principal at DCM, said “We think augmented reality provides a really interesting user interface, and a place to combine social interaction, marketing and content creation.”

As with many mobile technologies, the consumers in Japan may prefer different uses than consumers in the West. As reported in Venture Beat, Honda said that Tonchidot’s technology could be used to stage games in the real world, and gave the example of having robots battle each other through your phone on a real physical location like a playing field!

See the MobiAD article: Mobile Augmented Reality Builds Deep Consumer Engagement