In 2021, the meta-universe is all over the world, directly promoting the development of the VR/AR industry. According to Statista's forecast, the global VR/AR market size may exceed $12.1 billion in 2024. At the same time as the rapid development of VR/AR, the problems behind it are also constantly highlighted: low content quality, poor immersive experience, and high cost still need to be solved by participants.
1. Development status of global VR/AR industry
The VR/AR industry chain includes four parts: hardware, software, content production and industry application. Statista data shows that the global VR/AR industry market size in 2020 was 3.89 billion US dollars, down 22% year-on-year, mainly affected by the black swan event of the epidemic and the cold winter of global capital. With the rise of the metacosm, capital recovery and end-user acceptance of VR/AR, the market size is expected to continue to rise. It is estimated that in 2024, the global VR/AR industry market size will reach 12.19 billion US dollars, and the compound growth rate from 2021 to 2024 may exceed 36%.
Figure 1.1
In the four major market segments, hardware directly reaches the end consumer, bringing users an immersive three-dimensional sensory experience. VR gyro data shows that in 2016, the shipments of the two major equipment represented by VR headsets and AR glasses were 2 million units; in 2020, shipments increased by more than 2 times to 7.1 million units, including 6.7 million VR headsets and 400,000 AR glasses. This figure is expected to cross the 10 million mark in 2021 and reach 20 million in 2022. The growth of hardware equipment shipments has become a powerful boost to the expansion of the global VR/AR market.
Figure 1.2
At the same time, vr/AR commercialization scenarios are becoming more and more diversified. In addition to well-known application scenarios such as games and entertainment, VR/AR has gradually entered new fields such as medical treatment, education, and manufacturing, and the industry penetration rate is also increasing. According to Perkins Coie data, the penetration rate of VR/AR in medical health, education, labor training, and manufacturing scenarios has exceeded 20% in 2021, of which the penetration rate of medical health is as high as 38%.
Figure 1.3
In recent years, the growth of vr/AR market size and the continuous improvement of penetration rate are closely related to the improvement of underlying technology and the promotion of meta-universe concepts. 1) Network environment optimization. 5G network infrastructure is gradually being built globally. According to the GSMA data of the Global Mobile Communication Systems Association, as of the third quarter of 2021, 176 operators in 70 countries have opened 5G commercial services, and the global average 5G penetration rate has reached 8%, while in some countries, such as South Korea and China, it has exceeded 30%. 5G creates a low-latency, wide-connectivity, and high-speed network environment for data transmission, optimizes the VR/AR end-user experience, and provides strong underlying technical support for its scenario-based landing. 2) Metaverse concept boost. The immersive experience that VR/AR brings to users is regarded as the cornerstone and core of the metaverse, and becomes the entrance to knock on the door of the metaverse. In 2021, the concept of meta-universe will sweep the world, becoming the center of hot discussion and the object of competition of major capital, injecting strong impetus into the development of related industries.
2. Global VR/AR investment and financing status
2016 is known as the first year of VR. According to VR gyro data, the amount and amount of investment in the global VR/AR field showed a small peak in 2016, reaching 26.18 billion yuan and 203 respectively. However, VR/AR technology has not achieved a revolutionary breakthrough, and the pain points of vertigo and delayed experience still exist, so the capital is becoming more rational and the investment fever has declined. In 2021, home isolation led to the rise of end users' demand for real-world immersive experience, and then superimposed on the "overnight popularity" of the meta-universe concept, VR/AR became an investment outlet, with a total of 340 investment events throughout the year, with an investment amount of up to 55.6 billion yuan, an increase of 128% year-on-year.
Figure 2.1
In 2021, the global investment peak occurred in April, May and August, mainly affected by Epic Games' $1 billion strategic financing, Snap's $500 million acquisition of WaveOptics, And ByteDance's $9 billion acquisition of Pico and other events. Among them, August was the hottest month for investment in the whole year, with an amount of more than 10.8 billion yuan.
Figure 2.2
In terms of sub-sectors, in 2021, the global industry application field achieved 114 investment events, accounting for 33.5%, followed by hardware, content and software, with the number of events 107, 76 and 43 respectively.
Figure 2.3
3. Pain points in the development of the global VR/AR industry
In the past few years, although VR/AR has been favored by many investors, its large-scale application has not really been realized. According to Perkins Coie, from the perspective of end users, the main reasons restricting their choice of VR/AR devices are content, experience, cost and other factors. Among them, 27% of users believe that the current VR/AR related content quality is not high, the quantity is limited and the availability is not strong, and the phenomenon-level content is even rarer; 19% of users said that there is still a lot of room for improvement in the VR/AR immersive experience, and the problems of excessive headset equipment, wearing vertigo, and data transmission delay need to be broken.
Figure 3.1
4. Summary of the development of the global VR/AR industry
In 2021, the meta-universe wave swept in, VR/AR once again gained the favor of capital since 2016, and the market scale continued to expand. Vr/AR application fields have also expanded from games and entertainment scenes that naturally require immersion to medical, educational, manufacturing and other scenarios, and the "breaking the circle" effect is obvious. In the future, the meta-universe concept will continue to innovate business models and bring greater imagination space to the development of the VR/AR industry. The large-scale commercial application of VR/AR still needs to be created by all participants in the industry to break through existing constraints such as technology, hardware and content.
For more exciting content, please pay attention to the "36Kr Research" WeChat public account.
Attached: 36Kr Research Institute public number