Market
AR/VR market is estimated to be an $80 billion to $100 billion market in
the next 5 to 7 years. Therefore, AR/VR is both a sizeable and strategic market
for many industries. Much like robotics have altered automotive and logistics
companies, AR/VR has the potential to transform industries and provide large
companies substantial competitive advantage in short period of time. In fact,
AR/VR is already attracting increasingly amounts of capital from both corporate
investors as well as traditional VCs. The first three quarters of 2017 saw $1.65
billion dollars of investment, already surpassing the $1.56 billion dollars of
investment in calendar year 2016 – and 2018 is forecasted to be another record-
breaking year.
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Both mobile and PC computing platforms continue to advance in power and
availability, however neither medium has fundamentally changed capabilities in
over a decade. AR/VR has the potential to fundamentally alter the use of both
platforms and to transform multiple industries, disrupting existing ecosystems
and creating new markets in the process. AR/VR is already reshaping multiple
industries, including real estate, design, shopping, dating, medicine, sports,
entertainment and gaming. Technology is advancing rapidly while competition is
increasing availability and decreasing pricing.
The impact of AR/VR technology has been most obvious in gaming. These
new technologies enable a new medium, based on different mathematic and
algorithmic principles, that provide gamers with a total immersion experience like
never before. Users are no longer passive viewers interacting at the periphery
of the content, but rather placed at the center of the gaming experience – a
virtual world catered specifically to them. Successful market examples include
Facebook's Oculus Rift, HTC's Vive, and Sony's PlayStation VR. Particularly
noteworthy is the Nintendo/Naintic breakout success, Pokémon Go – a VR
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"Healthcare Augmented and Virtual Reality Market Worth $5.1 Billion By 2025: Grand View Research, Inc."
PR Newswire, 19 June 2017,
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reality-market-worth-51-billion-by-2025-grand-view-research-inc-629349303.html.
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