China: The giant Killer of VR Industry
Not many years ago, Chinese products were not used to be welcomed very gracefully. It was a joke among friends to address something which is not durable calling that a chinese product. But things have changed overtime. “Made in China” is now a brand. A brand where everyone wants to invest. And VR is one of the promising products of that brand.
It was america who initiated the work of VR. Ivan sutherland, who created the first head mounted display system, David Em, who became the first artist to produce navigable virtual worlds, Jaron Lanier, Who popularized the word virtual reality, or present Palmer Luckey, the Oculus boss, all these brilliant names are of American origin.
But suddenly another player came on the pitch and with it’s amazing strike rate it left behind all the masters. It’s none other than china. It’s not very early when started to be in this VR business. China came to business. But also very recently they started picking pace. And now they are the leader in the VR industry leaving behind america, germany and all the former giant.
2016 is the year when china really jumped onto the leaderboard. They keep growing. And now they are far ahead from the second boy in the class. A few magical numbers will strengthen this statement. China’s VR market is forecast to expand to 54.45 billion yuan (US$7.9 billion) by 2021. And the compound annual growth of this market is expected to reach 91.2 percent, makes it being doubled every year.
They are also leading in VR headset shipments. And there are hardly anyone to compete with them. And as this headset is the heart of VR business, what can stop restrain them from being on top.
But this conquer hasn’t been achieved overnight, also it has not been done single-handedly. The china government and the china people are equally appreciable for this. China govt had always an eye on how to develop in tech. So they tried to keep no barriers on the way. They have given recognition to VR as a part of china government’s 13th ‘5 year plan’. The Ministry of Industry, Information and Technology have opened a R&D lab on VR. And the people are also very welcoming to tech.Normally tech falls down when the people could not take the tech wholeheartedly or do not understand the tech. Chinese people are an exception here. They are using VR in daily basis in their daily work. These led investors to put their money in this sector. And they are investing in a huge scale. In 2015 and 2016, about 593 million dollar has been invested in VR sector, Which resulted in 30% of chinese startup being VR dependent.
That’s how China is conquering the market. If things go like this in the very near future China will be the solo name in the industry. They have certainly turned their population into manpower and that’s leading them even further. It has led them to become a giant killer. Now they are leading towards getting that ‘giant’ tag.
