Augmented reality to dominate by 2020
Virtual reality gets all the press, but it’s AR tech that will score
Everyone tuned into tech has heard of virtual reality and its coming wave of goggles with futuristic names such as Oculus Rift that immerse you in other worlds.
News flash: VR is poised to take a significant backseat to AR — augmented reality — as soon as gear providing that partly immersive experience becomes mature.
By 2020, AR will claim a projected $120 billion of the total $150 billion AR/VR market, according to a new report from Manatt Digital Media, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm targeting digital entertainment and advertising firms.
Where VR is a closed-off expe- rience, AR eyewear will allow viewers to see the real world while visually overlapping relevant information in the user’s field of view.
“Although this technology’s story is told more strongly through the magic of VR, it’s clear that AR is the route to the mass market,” Manatt Digital Media CEO Peter Csathy says.
Although video games have served as the proof-of-concept platform for many VR/AR con- tent providers, Hollywood and Madison Avenue players increasingly are keen to offer consumers alt-reality content. Disney recently invested in VR content provider Jaunt and Lucasfilm has set up an in-house lab dedicated to making VR content for franchises such as Star Wars. In the ad world, brands such as Nike and Ferrari have used VR to help sell their products, often leveraging inexpensive smartphone-based VR tech such as Google Cardboard and View Master VR.
Manatt’s report indicates that within AR, about $40 billion in revenue will be generated by hardware, an area where many eyes remain fixed on Alphabet’s restart of AR pioneer Google Glass. Although that product never got beyond an enterprise-focused test market, Google’s lead in a $500 million investment in Florida-based AR company Magic Leap spotlights its intent to get AR right the second time around. And Microsoft hopes to play in both worlds with its forthcoming HoloLens, which is said to combine the virtues of both AR and VR hardware tech.
The remaining $80 billion of AR’s pie be divvied up by applications ranging from movies to theme parks, according to DigiCapital research. Meanwhile, VR’s $30 billion share will come largely from video games (about 45%) with the rest almost evenly split between film and theme park applications and hardware.
Microsoft and Facebook both have indicated that their respective four-figure products, HoloLens and Oculus Rift, will hit developers next year.