Enterprise Virtual Reality Applications - USA market will surpass $9.4B by 2028, states the recent Virtual Reality Markets Report 2023 - 2028 by Research & Markets, one of the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data.
There were some wide speculations and reports in some of the media outlets questioning the fate of Metaverse and VR Industry, post the shut down of Microsoft's Holo Lens and mass lay-off's from Meta.
There were even couple of news articles claiming that Mark Zuckerberg has quietly withdrawn his efforts and shut down Meta's Metaverse platforms and eventually calling out the VR & Metaverse Industry at large. Both these instances were pertaining to the decisions and circumstances surrounding two independent organizations and an entire Industry can't be at the mercy of decisions taken by few dominant players in the Industry.
We saw a similar fate with Google Plus, when it was eventually shut down in 2018 after multiple iterations and updates, but the social media industry thrives and grows to this day. Just because a big tech company failed at a technology (or) they aren't able to deliver on their promise, it doesn't mean the end of road for the entire industry or the technology itself.
We have seen several such instances during the dot com boom, when many dot com companies bit the dust and startups who disrupted the status quo back then are the leaders today.
The report further states that, the Virtual Reality Industry will gain substantial ground post the advancements in Edge Computing and 5G in parlance with the Enterprise Market. Edge Computing is already creating phenomenal change in the Industrial Segments with their applications across IoT Devices.
5G will be the bedrock upon which seamless, latent free 3D content will be built upon. One of the main use cases of VR & Metaverse in an Enterprise Application is remote collaboration and 5G will be a biggest enabler in making this smooth transition a reality. Technologists and Visionaries always look at the bigger picture in the longer run. Oculus was bought by Facebook (Meta) back in 2014 for $2 Billion. Oculus today controls close to 85% of the VR Headsets Market Share, making it a Monopolistic behemoth in this space. They have spent several billions of dollars in the process of transforming this into a profitable & viable venture and this has raised the question and the earlier mentioned reports by some faction of the media. It added more fuel, when Meta announced recently that they have spent over $15 Billion towards various VR initiatives of the company and ensuing a massive lay-off across the organization.
Obvious to the point, this raised eyebrows and questioned the entire Industry's & Technology's potential at large. On the other hand, Microsoft too shut it's entire Mixed Reality operations post their Billion Dollar deal with the US Army fell off.
These are all two different scenarios pertaining to two completely individual tech companies with an entirely different business case and focus. Both the users and the applications aren't ready for VR in the consumer market yet.
The average Smartphone Usage in India is about 5 hours per day.
If VR has to replace this staggering number, we need to have compelling productivity tools, affordable devices etc. Where are the use case and application for such a vast amount of time in the consumer end?
Whereas, the Enterprise Market is where the Gold Digger must be digging. VR will eventually overcome and replace Smartphone to become the de-facto computing device, but not yet.
Started off as a research project in 1968 for the military, it took nearly 3 to 4 decades for Internet to become mainstream and widely used by the users for their day to day activities.
Virtual Reality will also attain a similar value soon, when the technology, users, use case, form factor and application all fall into place, probably within the next 3-5 years. The Enterprise Market has already started adopting lot of VR based applications and Use cases for their regular workforce related activities as well as for future goals. Companies and People working in this space could add value to this statement with their own experiences and work.
We as a startup can showcase our work and experience in the domain and our practices as a testament to the above statement.
Decentralization, which is the crux of Web 3.0, can't be again at the mercy of few large tech conglomerates.
