This is an email from XRB WIRE, a newsletter by XR Bound.
Mar 7, 2021
XRB WIRE : AR/VR/3D/Game/AI insights for decision makers- 40
In this week’s Edition:
Big Story : AR & VR Growth Status
Experience : VR fitness games & programs
Case-Study : VR for the travel Industry
Product Launch : Moverio AR Smart Glasses
By Harold Raichur
Big Story : The growth curve of AR & VR
A good marketer sells a product to a customer.
A great marketer keeps the customer interested after the sale & aims to develop a long-term relationship.
This is what IKEA achieved when they created a digital AR app store & gave the app to millions of their customers.With The trend setting augmented reality app IKEA gave us a friction less 24/7 key to their store & in turn got a smooth entry into our homes.
Any consumer brand can use this IKEA strategy for their business.The same technology is available to every consumer brand that wants to harness digital technology like IKEA did.
A look at this 2019 technology trend report from Deloitte shows that the mid-market companies were already using AR. Then global market for AR was estimated to be in the range of 75 billion dollars.
When COVID hit us many businesses pivoted to AR/VR & other digital technologies to stay in business. As a result the current market size for AR has zoomed to 130–140 Billion dollars.
This trend was visible with other technologies too.
An expensive mixed reality hardware systems like Microsoft Hololens saw a 44 fold jump in usage during the pandemic. UK alone saw an increase of 350% in sales of VR devices.
The companies who pivoted to AR & VR realized an immediate cut down on costs related to man power, time & usage of resources like travel & space.
For those companies who gained by going digital, will no longer be able to justify a revert to the old ways of doing things.
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Resilience of Virtual Reality
The story for Virtual Reality is being written. How this story evolves depends on two major factors.
A- Easy & user friendly access to low cost hardware
B- A world wide install base of 100 million ( estimated) devices to begin with.
The last version of Oculus Quest is the right step in that direction. It has processing power, un-tethered without cables, competitively priced. With economies of scale there is no reason why VR devices cant follow in the footsteps of smartphones.
We can be sure of one thing, there are clear reasons why VR has moved beyond hype.
Industry veterans like Daniel Japiassu believe virtual reality has a larger role to play & it’s not for gaming alone.
He says,
“ Five years from now, rather than a Zoom meeting, people will just put on a VR headset. I think that’s where the market will go.”
If in the 90's there were question marks about the adoption of websites & smartphones faced doubts in 2000s, it is the same for VR now.
According to Japiassu, that future is not far away when,
“VR will be as ubiquitous in business and education as websites and the smartphone are now”.
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Evolving ecosystem of VR Fitness apps
We have professional interest to know the health benefits of VR based fitness programs & games. Like us if this interests you, then check out VR HEALTH INSTITUTE .
This is how they describe themselves on their website
“ The VR Health Institute exists to help provide concrete, objective data for the discussion of video games as a source of healthy physical activity. The VR Health Institute also aims to be a hub for the VR community interested in the broader impact and the role of virtual and augmented reality in a healthy lifestyle ”.
Stuart Dredge from ‘The Guardian’ has written a personal account on his experiments with VR fitness programs during the pandemic.
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Travel Industry & VR for business leads
AR has made a mark in the tourism industry, but even VR has also begun to show up.
This BBC article proves that VR is no longer a gimmick & you will see how the tourism industry is using virtual reality to bring their business back on track.
And no, VR won’t replace the personal experience of sight, sound & smell. As the article explains, VR is helping tourism companies drive traffic to their business & convert those leads into sales.
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Product Launch : Moverio AR Smart Glasses
with MOVERIO AR devices by Epson has launched 2 new smart glasses
Interesting Tweet
- Ryan Duffy from Morning Brew testing cool AR/VR apps.
- Get your Samsung #AR Facebook lens by Playback studios on Catchar.
- If space is your thing, then Watch Mars rover land in a VR environment (needs high speed internet)
- Watch real time geomorphology with a Augmented-Reality sandbox
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Hope you like this edition, give me feedback to make this newsletter better & please subscribe below. See you next week, till then keep rocking.
We develop AR/VR, Games & 3d projects. Purchase our Unity Store Hair & Fur tool asset. Watch our show reel here & let us know how we can help you with your project.
