Virtual reality will be a bustling industry by the middle of the next decade, but getting to that point will take some time, according to a study released today.
The new 10-year industry forecast from Greenlight Insights and Road to VR suggests the VR business will be "very modest" through 2018, and in an "inflexion zone" for the next five years before blossoming to $38 billion in annual revenues by 2026.
An oft-cited study from Digi-Capital had concluded that the VR industry would be worth $30 billion by 2020.
But despite the rosy industry forecasts, more than half of the report’s industry respondents said they expect to bring in less than $1 million in VR revenue in the next 12 months, and just 45.2% think they’ll be profitable in that time frame.
As the number of VR hardware platforms has grown to include the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR, Google Daydream (and Cardboard), and Samsung Gear VR, among others, one of the biggest concerns about the health of the consumer VR industry has been a dearth of quality content.
That is changing as more and more content is developed, but the report suggested that the lion’s share of industry revenue will still come from hardware sales. Overall, the authors wrote, about 62% of revenue will come from sale of headsets, VR cameras, and other gear.
Within hardware, meanwhile, VR cameras are expected to bloom from less than 1% today (for devices like Ricoh’s Theta S or Samsung’s Gear 360) to about 12%, or $4.6 billion, by 2026, Greenlight and Road to VR predicted.
At the same time, there will likely be a "broad transition" away from VR headsets with cables—like the Rift, Vive, and PSVR—to cordless systems starting in three to five years. Some of those systems will still depend on being linked to a separate computing device, like a phone. But the report suggested that standalone headsets with built-in computing could become a major category within the sector by 2021.
Already, however, Facebook-owned Oculus and Microsoft have talked about standalones, though neither have shared timeframes on when they expect to release their devices.
Another significant shift in the industry is expected to come in 2020, the report concluded, when revenue from consumer-related VR experiences like games will be surpassed by enterprise experiences like workforce training.
"The enterprise market will become the largest part of the VR industry," the authors wrote, "accounting for nearly a third of total industry revenues from all sources by 2026."
[Continue reading at Fast Company online.]
Source: fastcompany.com, November 2, 2016 - by Daniel Terdiman
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MasterCard has announced a partnership with Coin to bring MasterCard payments to a wide array of fitness bands, smart watches and other wearable devices. This collaboration builds upon the MasterCard's introduction in October of its Commerce for Every Device program, which aims to enable any consumer gadget, accessory or wearable as a payment device.
The first set of companies working with MasterCard and Coin to implement payment technology in their products are: Atlas Wearables, which designs advanced fitness trackers; Moov, "a personal fitness coach on your wrist"; and Omate, maker of fashionable smartwatches.
"The great thing about the MasterCard program is that we are adding payment functionality to items that consumers are already using – fitness bands, jewelry, clothing, watches," said Sherri Haymond, senior vice president of digital payments at MasterCard. "This makes the products more useful for consumers and enhances the value device manufacturers can deliver to their customers. Coin complements that approach and enables us to reach an expanded set of device partners."
Coin will provide hardware and software technology that can be integrated with the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service and embedded into devices, enabling manufacturers to quickly and easily implement payment functionality into their consumer products, the MasterCard announcement said.
Coin's Payment of Things platform serves as a turnkey product for the wearable/IoT industry. "Leveraging Coin's technology, device manufacturers will benefit from significantly reduced costs and time to market," said Kanishk Parashar, CEO and co-founder of Coin. "MasterCard is our essential partner as we team up to enable the wearable domain that is projected to grow to an astounding $53 billion by 2019."
Read article at Mobile Payments Today
Posted January 7, 2016
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The worldwide wearable device market (commonly referred to as wearables) will see continued growth as second- and third-generation iterations reach the market. These new devices will build upon the hardware and software of their predecessors and answer some of the shortcomings and concerns that potential customers have today.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC )Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker , the worldwide wearable device market will reach a total of 111.1 million units shipped in 2016, up a strong 44.4% from the 80 million units expected to ship shipped in 2015. By 2019, the final year of the forecast, total shipments will reach 214.6 million units, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28%.
“The most common type of wearables today are fairly basic, like fitness trackers, but over the next few years we expect a proliferation of form factors and device types,” said Jitesh Ubrani , Senior Research Analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. “Smarter clothing, eyewear, and even hearables (ear-worn devices) are all in their early stages of mass adoption. Though at present these may not be significantly smarter than their analog counterparts, the next generation of wearables are on track to offer vastly improved experiences and perhaps even augment human abilities.”
Read entire article at Payments Industry Intelligence
Written by Alex Rolfe
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