Recently, the "White Paper on the Development of the Virtual Reality Industry (2021)" released at the Cloud Summit of the 2021 World VR Industry Conference shows that from January to September 2021, the cumulative investment and financing amount of the virtual reality industry has reached 20.709 billion yuan, and the number of investment and financing events and the amount of financing have exceeded the total amount of previous calendar years.
Internet giants are vigorously laying out. For example, Japanese social giant GREE announced that it will carry out meta-universe business, south Korean Ministry of Science and Technology and Information and Communications initiated the establishment of the "Meta-Universe Alliance"; social media giant Facebook planned to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to establish a "Meta-Universe"; ByteDance spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR hardware company Pico; Baidu has a special AR/VR team; Weimei Holography established a "Holographic Meta-Universe Division" to explore the layout of the Meta-Universe, and realized the meta-universe scene application through a multi-faceted technology ecology Internet companies such as Alibaba and Tencent have already extended their tentacles into this field through investment.
In addition to the capital level, the stimulation of the epidemic on the demand for home entertainment, the promotion of 5G, the popularity of the concept of "meta-universe", coupled with the gradual maturity of the industrial chain, the decline in hardware costs and the improvement of the sense of experience, make the VR/AR industry once again become a steamed bun in the eyes of everyone.
Various factors have catalyzed the development of the VR/AR industry, and its product shipments have increased by dozens of times compared to the past few years, but compared with other consumer electronics, the industry has always lacked phenomenon-level products. Among them, factors such as high cost, poor portability, and lack of content are the problems that need to be solved urgently in front of VR/AR.
The VR/AR industry is once again in the spotlight
The data shows that since 2014, the domestic VR/AR industry has gradually heated up, and the amount and amount of financing have increased exponentially, until 2016, the industry had 241 financing transactions and reached the high point of 4.06 billion yuan of financing amount. Therefore, the outside world regards 2016 as the "first year of VR".
The hot "metacosm" in the first half of this year also played a direct catalytic role in the VR/AR industry. In March 2021, Roblox, known as the "first stock of the meta-universe concept", was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its stock price rose by more than 50% on its first day, and its market value soared to $40 billion. Since then, the "first shot of the meta-universe" has been launched. Facebook has announced that it will transform into a meta-universe company, and it is rumored that it will change the company name in the near future. ByteDance also spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR hardware company Pico, which has sparked speculation about its entry into the metacosm.
The metaverse was thus pushed to the forefront. Although there is no clear definition, in the eyes of many people, the metaverse is the next generation of Internet forms, and VR/AR is the necessary stage from concept to reality. According to the Tianyancha App, as of October 22, there were nearly 400 meta-universe-related trademark registration companies, including Many Internet giants such as Tencent and Ali; As of mid-September, China has added more than 3,300 VR-related companies this year, an average of more than 12 per day, of which more than 530 companies were added in April.
In the view of Zhang Daoning, founder and CEO of VR company NOLO, the popularity of the concept of "meta-universe" has a very positive impact on the VR/AR industry, "Computers are the infrastructure of the Internet era, smart phones are the infrastructure of the mobile Internet, and VR/AR is the infrastructure of the next generation of the Internet." Zhang Daoning said.
Dream-making meta-universe
[Facebook invests billions of dollars in virtual reality]
According to the news, at a time when the advertising business is slowing, Facebook (FB.US) announced that it will disclose the financial data of the augmented virtual reality division and invest billions of dollars to develop "meta-universe" technology to improve the hardware, software and so on related to virtual reality. Facebook said the investment in the sector would reduce its overall operating profit by about $10 billion in 2021. Last March, Facebook acquired virtual reality wearables company Oculus VR for the equivalent of $2 billion in cash and equity. Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook aims to reach 1 billion people in the next 10 years and generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue in digital commerce.
【SAIC Motor Applied for Registration of Nearly 100 "Cheyuan Universe" Trademarks】
According to the Tianyancha App, recently, SAIC Motor Group Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of nearly 100 trademarks containing the words "Cheyuan Universe", and the international classification involves advertising sales, social services, communication services, website services, etc. At the same time, the company also applied for a number of trademarks such as "Z UNIVERSE", "Z meta domain", "zero beam universe" and "most meta domain". At present, the above-mentioned trademark status is pending substantive examination and trademark application.
【Domestic offline VR game platform Dream Technology announces its entry into the meta-universe】
Recently, the domestic offline well-known VR game platform Dream Technology entered the meta-universe, spending three years to independently develop the domestic virtual reality social product "Dream World VR" open to players, and now has some basic core characteristics of the meta-universe: identity, friends, diversification, economic system, etc.
It is reported that "Dreamland VR" has been launched on the well-known domestic VR application platforms Huawei VR Glass and Pico Neo 3 in the first half of this year, and has been recognized by users of the two platforms as the top 3 applications of the two platforms.
【Micro-American Holographic Multi-Track Face Meta universe】
Micro-American Holographic (WIMI.US) as a domestic long-established VR/AR enterprise, has long begun to lay out the meta-universe, while the giants have poured in, Micro-American Holographic immediately established the "Holographic Meta-Universe Division", layout meta-universe underlying holographic technology research and development, and actively explore and layout the holographic meta-universe "next-generation Internet". In the following first half of the financial report, its amazing results allowed many shareholders to see the company's vision of the future. It is understood that many foreign software examples Such as Reddit, Stocktwits, Twitter, etc. have also received a lot of praise for them.
Its other core business holographic AR business also benefits from the "meta-universe" new wave, ushering in a new round of growth, micro-american hologram due to the deep ploughing in the field of holographic AR for many years, and thanks to the "meta-universe holographic AR first share" is called, for the development of meta-universe has a certain technical advantages, years of technology accumulation for its exploration of meta-universe laid the foundation. Obviously, the holographic AR business of Weimei Holographic will face a broader market in the future.
[Vietnamese game studio Sipher Completes $6.8 Million Seed Round Funding Round]
According to foreign media reports, the investors in this round of financing include Arrington Capital, Konvoy Ventures, Definance Capital and Signum Capital. It is reported that the studio aims to combine decentralized financial technology with the game ecosystem based on the concept of metaversity to provide players around the world with more immersive NFT games.
With the VR/AR industry hot again, in addition to the old players who successfully crossed the previous trough and survived, new players who felt the market heat also threw themselves into it, and Internet companies that had long been laid out also chose to increase investment. In the face of a complex environment and various competitors, if startups want to break through, the core is to rely on high-quality products.
As the internet moves toward its next form, startups in the VR/AR industry still have a chance to succeed.