Virtual and Augmented Reality for the enterprise and consumer sectors has taken the world of tech by storm. It has transformed from a figment of the science fiction imagination into the billion-dollar business. The global VR and AR market was valued at $27B in 2018. And by 2025, it is expected to reach $393B with a CAGR of 69.4% during 2019-2025.
The trend for Virtual and Augmented Reality for enterprise is growing. More and more companies are planning to invest in Virtual and Augmented Reality enterprise solutions in 2020. But how to assess the impact of Virtual and Augmented reality on your business? And what are the biggest barriers to mass adoption of VR and AR? Today’s article will explore how leaders in automotive, manufacturing, media, and other sectors can drive measurable outcomes from Virtual and Augmented reality for enterprise. We will analyze in what areas companies use Virtual and Augmented reality and will take a look at the most common enterprise VR & AR cases.
Enterprise Virtual and Augmented Reality market at a glance
Once Virtual and Augmented Reality was associated with gaming only, but now it has gained momentum in all industries. Moreover, according to the survey conducted by VR intelligence, gaming got less interest by companies who specialize in XR (VR & AR - known collectively as Extended Reality (XR)) compared to 2018’s results [1]. In 2018, 50% of respondents said that they intended to work within the gaming industry over the next 12 months, but this figure had fallen to just a third of respondents in the 2019 survey.
In 2020, the focus will be primarily made on enterprise Virtual and Augmented Reality rather than on VR & AR products for the consumer sector. There are several issues that impede consumer adoption of immersive technologies: lack of killer content; the price of devices; a gap in consumer awareness as well as poor usability of HMDs. It is predicted that we will see widely accepted mainstream consumer adoption of VR and MR in the next 3-4 years.
According to IDC [2], the commercial industries that are expected to spend the most on augmented reality enterprise solutions by 2020 are retail ($1.5B) and discrete manufacturing ($1.4B). Among other industries that will see popularity in the next 5 years are securities and investment services (181.4% CAGR) and banking (151.9% CAGR).
Enterprise VR by the use case
Experts from Tractica predict that global revenue of Virtual Reality for enterprise will increase from $1.0B in 2018 to $12.6B annually by 2025 [3]. The enterprise VR market is poised to grow rapidly in five areas including education, virtual prototyping/3D modeling, location-based entertainment, training and simulation, and medical therapy. Technology trends that will be on the rise are:
- 5G networks
- Eye tracking
- Foveated rendering
- Hand tracking
- Motion capture
- OLED displays
- Positional tracking
- Simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM)
Despite the continuing growth, adoption of enterprise VR cases is moving slower than expected. The main reasons can be the unsatisfactory VR experiences due to the cost of VR HMDs, accessories, premium content, and the requisite computing hardware for PCs as well as tracking issues and field of view (FOV) limitations.
Tractica claims that significant progress in eye tracking will make standalone user experience and pricing attractive by 2022. In 2025, HMD shipments for enterprise VR use cases will reach more than 41M (15.9M smartphone HMDs, 2.6M PC-based HMDs, and 22.7M standalones). In terms of revenue, standalone HMDs are the largest contributor to the overall VR hardware market, generating $17.5B in revenue from 2018 to 2025. In comparison, PC-based HMDs will generate $8.5B and smartphone HMDs $5.9B from 2018 to 2025.
Enterprise Augmented Reality adoption
By 2022, the Augmented Reality (AR) market size is expected to reach $80.8B [4]. Gartner claims that by that time 70% of businesses will unlock the potential of Augmented Reality for enterprise, and 25% will have deployed immersive technologies to production. So the next few years are set to be very crucial for the evolution of Augmented Reality for enterprise. According to the survey [5], industrial enterprises are one of the highest adopters of Augmented Reality.
With the help of new capabilities AR gives, companies try to improve operational efficiency, solve the skilled labor shortage, and lower costs on training by transferring knowledge to new workers in a more effective way. Enterprise AR cases are most encountered in design, manufacturing, service, and training domains. What concerns AR hardware usage, 80% and 67% of respondents are making experiences available on smartphones or tablets. Digital eyewear and smart glasses are less common now. But in the upcoming years, we will see the significant progress towards AR experiences these hands-free devices provide. For industrial workers especially, it is important to perform complex tasks with both hands without distracting on gadgets.
How to adopt Virtual and Augmented Reality for enterprise successfully?
It’s true, XR gives enterprises a lot: helps enterprises reduce the level of errors in an industrial setting and increase the speed of the task completion. But still, there are issues that stop companies from integrating VR/AR into their business. They include a lack of understanding of the benefits, a lack of proof of ROI, the cost, and problems with integrating the technology with existing systems/processes [1].
To overcome these challenges, industrial enterprises should look for reliable technology partners. They can help enterprises deliver robust solutions and measure the impact of Virtual and Augmented Reality on their enterprise. According to VRX Industry Insight Report 2019-2020, 36% of enterprises say that all XR content is built in-house, whereas 46% said that at least some part of their work on XR content is outsourced. The coming years will be an exciting time as more and more enterprises will partner with IT outsourcing vendors to implement XR in their business.
N-iX helps enterprises from all over the world build custom Virtual and Augmented Reality enterprise solutions in logistics, advertising, education, and other industries. We offer end-to-end enterprise VR, AR, and MR production from concepts to prototyping to solution development and deployment. Our developers create VR/AR solutions for inventory management, remote maintenance, facility emulation, data visualization, virtual design, or immersive training simulations. Together with Sports VTS, we have worked on the creation of a VR simulation for training professional quarterbacks. Based on the data about NFL players, the solution tracks the player’s movements and analyzes their performance in real-time. This enables players to minimize injury risk and maximize their performance by training in a safe virtual environment.
Wrap-up
The increased adoption of Virtual and Augmented Reality among enterprises reshapes industries, economies, and workforces across the world. Advancements in hardware and software help make immersive experiences more available to everyone.
However, to minimize uncertainty associated with VR/AR adoption, enterprises need to partner with experienced technology providers. They will help them tackle technology-related issues and drive innovations to grow their businesses.
Please feel free to contact our VR/AR experts if you have any questions.
References:
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VRX Industry Insight Report 2019-2020
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IDC's Worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide
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Virtual Reality for Enterprise and Industrial Markets by Tractica
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The Global Augmented Reality (AR) Market 2019 report
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The State of Industrial Augmented Reality 2019
