Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are two of the most innovative and groundbreaking technologies of the industrial revolution of the 21st century. These emerging technologies have endless potential and enable endless opportunities. And here’s how AR VR leads growth comes into play.
Consequently, the world’s technology leaders are slowly moving their platforms to adopt and incorporate VR and AR technologies. Furthermore, the ability of these immersive reality technologies to enhance customer experience and strengthen their engagement has led them to experience rapid growth and adoption among companies and consumers alike.
Know Your Technology: AR VR and other Emerging Technologies
AR and VR are both immersive technology that offers different kinds and levels of immersive experiences to consumers.
AR is an immersive tech that enables the enhancement of the real world with the help of various digital elements, effectively augmenting the real world. This enhancement happens with different digital elements like sound, visual graphics, overlays, and sensory feedback like haptics. These elements all work together to provide a sense of immersiveness in the new “augmented world” to the user.
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The AR systems try to deliver all these digital elements to blend in with the real world and effectively enhance them. Today, you can find various devices such as AR glasses, smart camera apps, and different AR kits that provide diverse AR experiences to the user.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, VR provides an entirely virtual experience. VR enables a 3D virtual world with various digital elements such as sounds, additional graphics, and sensory elements like haptics. VR effectively blends these elements to immerse the user completely in the entire virtual world and make the users feel like they are a part of that virtual world.
Currently, VR systems are more common in availability and accessibility than AR devices due to the simplicity of VR, which only requires a high fidelity display. However, AR systems like AR camera apps that provide various AR experiences with overlays of different digital elements are top-rated and more common than any VR device. It is due to the availability of smartphones with cameras in the general consumer space.
Various kinds of VR devices are available in the market today. VR headsets from different brands like Microsoft’s HoloLens, PlayStation VR, Facebook’s Oculus VR, etc., provide VR content to consumers.
However, apart from AR and VR, another more prominent emerging device is different wearable devices. Wearable technology is a technology that users can wear as an accessory, fashion wears, jewelry, or even embedded in clothes and other wearable clothes. Wearable tech effectively makes these ordinary wearable things into smart things that can enable various kinds of functions. One of the most prominent wearable techs that consumers use the most is smartwatches. Smartwatches from different tech-giant brands like Apple, Google, Samsung, etc., are currently available worldwide.
Smart Home Tech is an IoT application in homes where the whole home effectively has IoT devices, making them smarter and interactive with the user and the home. Smart Home tech such as Google Home and Alexa dominate the smart speakers market that can connect to the smart home system to control different devices and machines across the house. Smart fridges, smart lights, lamps, smart ACs, smart wall sockets, etc., all come under smart home tech, these devices house various IoT devices and controllers to gain connectivity and can be controllable by the smart home system and the user.
How AR VR Leads Growth of these Emerging Technologies?
With the rapid advancement in science and engineering, emerging technologies are developing at a breakneck pace. Along with the evolution of AR and VR, the evolution of Artificial Intelligence and technologies like Machine Learning (ML) and Big Data is also accelerating. These (AI, ML, Big Data) technologies can make a system or a machine “intelligent” and have capabilities to make smart decisions and analyze vast amounts of data for deep learning. With this, AR and VR systems are becoming more realistic, smart, intuitive, and user-friendly. Consequently, these immersive reality innovations are becoming mainstream technologies incorporating various kinds of devices, methods, and environments.
Apart from this, the growth of other technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), silicon and processing technology, battery technology, storage technology, display technology, sensing technology, etc., will also significantly impact the growth of AR and VR technologies and even vice-versa. These immersive technologies depend upon these technologies and systems to deliver an immersive experience to the user. Alongside this, MR, the combination of AR and VR, also interchangeably impacts all these technologies.
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The convergence of AR VR and Robots is almost like a holy grail that provides an immersive AR VR environment to operate and control robots for different tasks and actions. Subsequently, this combination can also enhance consumer experiences and customer services across several industries with more personalized, accessible, and immersively designed experiences.
The adoption and accessibility of emerging technology and devices are also increasing with this. As a result, more and more consumers are willing to become early adopters of an emergent piece of tech. While early adopters were generally technology enthusiasts and industrialists, today, people are usually willing to adopt new technology and try it out. It also helps AR and VR to become primary or mainstream technologies present in different ranges and types of devices that aim to provide a broad spectrum of consumer experiences.
One of these emergent technologies that are becoming mainstream and are prominently present in the consumer market is wearable technology. Wearable technology is also a massive player in emerging devices that are successful at the enthusiast and general consumer levels with enormous economic benefits. Among the wearable tech market, smartwatches are prominent on all fronts.
This growth of AR, VR technology, and other emerging tech is also pretty evident, with their market value rising day by day. Researchers expect that the global market for AR, VR, and MR technologies will cross 30 Billion US Dollars in 2021. This figure also accounts for the dip in the market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In hindsight, the market will rise substantially after the effects of the pandemic subside. While due to the pandemic, the global market was down substantially. Conversely, the market for these emerging technologies will rise due to the exposure of online and remote technologies among general consumers during the lockdown period.
Accordingly, studies show that the global AR VR and MR market will rise to reach 300 Billion US Dollars by 2024. It is a significant rise of about ten times in less than four years. Moreover, it shows the massive potential of AR and VR technology. Alongside this exponential rise in AR and VR market, this rise also accompanies the rise and evolution in the Internet of Things (IoT), display technologies, communication and networking technology, and processing and storage technologies. Along with this, the wearable tech market is also increasing rapidly.
The global market for IoT technology was about 761 Billion US Dollars. This figure is forecast to cross 1,386 Billion US Dollars. This rate of increase accounts for about 10% compound annual growth rate of the IoT technology. However, the IoT market is like an umbrella covering various technologies and various emerging devices under its belt.
Nevertheless, the growth in IoT will take other technologies and devices with it. Consequently, tech like display, battery, sensors, etc., will also increase its market value alongside its evolution in science and engineering. Moreover, devices like smart lamps, smart fridges, smart environment control systems, etc., are also part of the smart home system of the IoT technology.
Apart from this, the wearable market has expectations of crossing 369 Billion US Dollars in 2021, while researchers predict that it will reach 524.9 Billion US Dollars by the end of 2025. This vast increase will keep pace for further developments in its market value and products in its science and engineering part.
While wearables certainly have expectations, smart home technology still has the most significant expectations besides AR and VR, with a current market value of about 289 Billion US Dollars and expectations to cross 400 Billion US Dollars by 2025. That’s about 10.1% of the compound annual growth rate. Moreover, it makes smart home technology the largest category in emerging devices, incorporates IoT technology, and pushes the growth of wearable devices.These figures clearly show how AR VR lead growth of emerging devices. Nevertheless, all these technologies are very new and will require time for broader adoption and accessibility. It is especially true for the VR market more than the AR market. It is due to the simplicity of having smartphones that can run AR applications. Since smartphones are ubiquitous, the capability of serving AR content to consumers is also universal. While devices like Google Cardboard make consuming VR content more accessible, the difficulty of having to have an additional head-mounting device to consume VR content makes it harder for developers to reach more consumers. Contrary to smartphones (for AR), which is a part of our lives at this stage.
