The virtual reality market was notably different in 2018. In September, Walmart announced it would use 17,000 VR headsets to train its employees. The company earlier acquired a virtual reality startup, Spatialand, to bolster its VR efforts.
Amazon had also added an AR feature to its iOS app, called Part Finder, which identified nuts and bolts using the iPhone’s camera. That feature is now gone. Oculus Go, a breakthrough standalone headset, has been discontinued. But despite its ups and downs, the VR market marches on:
- Market dimensions – According to a February 2020 report by ABI Research, issued before the pandemic, the VR market was predicted to surpass $25 billion in revenues by 2024.
- HTC Vive Pro 2 – HTC’s newest headset supports Display Stream Compression, or DSC, a first in VR gear. DSC is a visually lossless standard most frequently seen in high-end monitors. HTC says the Vive Pro 2 will minimize “motion blur” and the “screen-door effect,” the meshed lines noticeable in many older VR headsets. Eliminating the much-dreaded screen-door effect would be a big plus.
- Oculus Rift – Facebook, another major hardware player, having purchased Oculus Rift for $2 billion in March 2014, also launched a new headset, Oculus Quest 2.
- Walmart case study – The company directing Walmart’s VR employee training, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Strivr, notes that participating trainees reported a 30% higher satisfaction rating compared to traditional courses. VR trainees also scored higher on content tests 70% of the time, and demonstrated a 10-15% higher knowledge retention rate than those in traditional training. According to ARtillery Intelligence, VR applications within businesses will grow from $829 million in 2018 to $4 billion in 2023.
Anyone who has personally experienced the immersive qualities of virtual reality knows that it will reframe entertainment as we know it.”
— Michael Tchong
Ubertrends - Pokémon Go – VR’s closest cousin, augmented reality (AR), received a big shot in the arm when the popular mobile game Pokémon Go attracted 45 million daily users in summer 2016. True to its métier, Pokémon mixes digital imagery with the real world, presenting an evolution of Yelp Monocle, an augmented reality feature that debuted in 2009.
- Magic Leap – In October 2014, Google poured $542 million into an AR startup based in Plantation, Fla., called Magic Leap. After laying off around a 1,000 employees in May 2020, the company has pivoted to focus on the business market. The chart below shows major VR and AR market acquisitions and capitalizations, save for Faceshift and Polar Rose, which both, like Metaio, were acquired by Apple:
- Venture capital – Since 2012, companies in the AR/VR sector have raised $6.3 billion, according to Crunchbase. The peak year was 2017, when venture capitalists invested $3 billion in AR/VR startups. The market has cooled off significantly since then.
- Consumer awareness – A Statista survey of U.S. consumers, found that Facebook’s Oculus Rift had the highest consumer awareness among VR headsets with 35% of respondents having heard of it. High consumer awareness was, however, not enough, leading Facebook to launch Oculus for Business.
These latest announcements continue to stir the VR, AR, and MR (mixed reality) pot, all in 3D, of course. While the early hype has died down, the pandemic played a major role in convincing businesses of the virtues of virtual-reality-based remote immersions, leading to a boom in VR use. That could reframe the conversation in the days ahead.
Ubertrend Categorization: Digital Lifestyle.
