Consumers’ familiarity with augmented reality on smartphones through apps such as Snapchat and Pokemon GO isn’t carrying over to headset sales, said Strategy Analytics Thursday. AR headsets including Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens are niche products with sales “barely into the hundreds of thousands of units,” said the research firm. Google Glass kick-started the AR headset market in 2013, and though it wasn’t a commercial success, “the potential of AR became clear,” and surrounding hype led Google, Apple, Microsoft and other players to make serious investments in the AR field, said analyst David MacQueen. Much of AR technology found its way into smartphones, but dedicated AR headsets remain a niche product due to hardware cost, he said. The relatively low-cost $200 Lenovo slot-in Mirage AR headset drove the market to a peak level last year, but while it became the top-selling AR headset of all time, “it only moved the needle slightly,” pushing total shipments from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, said MacQueen. Slot-in AR devices represent most shipments, but binocular AR units such as HoloLens will gain followers as the market shifts to devices offering higher quality experiences, said the analyst. Key consumer use cases including gaming, marketing and search require a device capable of delivering rich 3D graphics, he said, and they’ll need to have a lower consumer cost, with similar functionality, than state-of-the-art technology, he said. “To drive the price down to a consumer-friendly price point for an AR device with a stereoscopic 3D view, it is likely that some of the functionality (and therefore component cost) will be shifted to a smartphone,” said MacQueen, saying smartphone OEMs are the most likely contenders to succeed long-term. Strategy Analytics projects a 10-million-unit global market by 2023 as average selling prices drop.
Samsung launched a “4D” lunar gravity virtual-reality consumer experience for the Galaxy S9+ smartphone and Gear VR headset called A Moon for All Mankind at its Samsung 837 experience center in New York. Consumers immerse themselves in a visual and physical VR experience of a fictional moon mission designed to convey the sensation of lunar gravity, said the company Thursday. The experience, designed with a team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, starts with a briefing with details about how astronauts move on the moon before visitors step into a flight suit and harness wearing a Gear VR headset, Samsung said.
AMD, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oculus and Valve are the founding companies in a new consortium that will promote the VirtualLink specification as an open industry standard for next-generation virtual-reality headsets, said the companies Tuesday. VirtualLink will enable VR headsets to connect with PCs and other devices through a single, high-bandwidth USB-C-based interface, “instead of a range of cords and connectors,” they said. The interface is an “alternative mode” of USB-C that “simplifies and speeds up VR setup time, avoiding key obstacles to VR adoption,” they said. “It also brings immersive VR experiences to smaller devices with fewer ports, such as thin and light notebooks.” The VirtualLink interface will be “purpose-built for VR” because it “optimizes for the latency and bandwidth demands that will enable headset and PC makers to deliver the next generation of VR experiences,” said the companies. Those seeking details of the VirtualLink spec before its formal “upcoming” launch can download an “advance overview” from the consortium’s website, provided they first register to join a Google group of “recipients,” said the companies. Nvidia applied May 11 to register VirtualLink as a trademark and service mark for an unusually long, 3,300-word list of possible commercial goods and services under three international classifications, Patent and Trademark Office records show.
Global shipments of augmented reality and virtual reality headsets declined 30.5 percent in Q1 to 1.2 million units, said IDC Tuesday. It blamed much of the decline on the “unbundling” of “screenless” VR headsets during the quarter. For much of 2017, vendors bundled those headsets free with the purchase of a high-end smartphone, “but that practice largely came to an end by the start of 2018,” said IDC. Despite the poor start to 2018, IDC “anticipates the overall market will return to growth over the remainder of the year as more vendors target the commercial AR and VR markets and low-cost standalone VR headsets such as the Oculus Go make their way into stores.” It forecasts the overall AR and VR headset market to grow to 8.9 million units in 2018, up 6 percent from 2017 and that shipments will reach 65.9 million units by 2022. VR devices such as the Oculus Go “seem promising not because Facebook has solved all the issues surrounding VR, but rather because they are helping to set customer expectations for VR headsets in the future," said IDC. “Looking ahead, consumers can expect easier-to-use devices at lower price points. Combine that with a growing lineup of content from game makers, Hollywood studios, and even vocational training institutions, and we see a brighter future for the adoption of virtual reality."
Worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality will reach $27 billion this year, up 92 percent over 2017, IDC reported Thursday. The consumer industry is projected to remain the biggest spender ($53 billion) on AR/VR products and services through 2022, followed by retail, manufacturing and transportation ($56 billion combined). VR gaming leads use cases, with spending expected to reach $7 billion this year.
Seagate and HTC Vive announced Friday the Seagate VR Power Drive, pushing storage capacity and battery life. The portable 1 TB unit, with an integrated Micro-B cable and USB-C adapter, connects to the Vive Focus, allowing users to access their file library directly from the Vive Focus headset, said the companies. The drive has a built-in 5,000 mAh battery. A belt clip is included.
Microdisplay supplier eMagin is “seeing broader accelerating interest” for its products in the consumer virtual- and augmented-reality market, said CEO Andrew Sculley on an earnings call last week. “New opportunities continue to surface for our high-brightness, direct-patterned OLED microdisplays,” he said. “Consistently, we hear from prospects in the consumer segment that our cutting-edge technology is a key enabler” for next-generation head-mounted-display VR products, he said. The design of eMagin’s next-generation microdisplay “is on track and going well,” and the company expects to have the first prototypes available to show customers by late this year or early 2019, said Sculley. “So far this year, we had inquiries from four new potential consumer electronics customers about designing and developing displays,” he said. “Discussions are also moving forward with potential mass production partners to help scale production.” Those talks have expanded, “as we were recently approached by another group and need to evaluate the best path forward that will give us the broadest application of our technology,” he said. Based on market interest, Sculley believes eMagin “will be a very active player in the AR/VR marketplace,” he said. Sculley conceded in Q&A that with the new “potential manufacturing partner coming to us” and needing to be evaluated, “it will likely take a little longer than we thought” to reach mass-scale production.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is developing a virtual reality simulation program that will allow first responders to practice emergency response operation and communication. One VR scenario is firefighting in a hotel, NIST said Friday, and researchers are creating scenarios for law enforcement. “We’re creating this test bed because we don’t believe anyone else has the focus or capabilities to test user interfaces for first responders,” Project Leader Scott Ledgerwood said. The agency said companies will be able to visit NIST “soon” to test experimental interfaces.
Augmented reality will create a $5.5 billion “market value” for the global automotive industry in 2022, rising at a 177 percent compound annual growth rate for the next five years, ABI Research said in a Monday report. AR “benefits automotive manufacturers at many stages of a product cycle, including design, prototyping, manufacturing, and marketing,” ABI said. Though automotive AR use is “still early,” the applications “have already shown proven” return on investment, it said. “ROI is always the first question to answer for any new technology, and this is especially true for AR.” The “symbiotic relationship” between AR and the “end-to-end automotive market is strong, and will continue to strengthen and grow,” it said.
One in five U.S. parents lives in a home with virtual-reality electronics, though 65 percent say they aren't planning to buy a VR device, children’s nonprofit Common Sense reported. The group canvassed 4,000 parents online in late December and reported 62 percent said VR will “provide educational experiences for their children." Eighty-four percent of parents whose children use VR said that. And 60 percent of parents are at least "somewhat concerned" their kids will experience “negative health effects while using VR,” it wrote Wednesday. “Some parents report that kids are already experiencing health issues,” including 13 percent who have bumped into something while using a device, 11 percent who have experienced dizziness, 10 percent who have had headaches and 8 percent who have had eyestrain, it said. “VR is likely to have powerful effects on children because it can provoke a response to virtual experiences similar to a response to actual experiences,” said the group. “Characters in VR may be especially influential on young children, even more so than characters on TV or computers. This can be good or bad depending on the influence.”