Hong Kong – Tailor Insight, the fintech market research organization, recently released a research report “WIMI Hologram Cloud, Microsoft and Apple Look Forward to New Developments in the AR Industry, Which Marks the Birth of an Important Milestone”. After several years, VR/AR has once again become a hot topic. Unlike in 2016, AR this time surpassed VR and became the absolute protagonist.
Recently, News related to AR has poured in. Technology giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple, Qualcomm, SAP, Nintendo, and HTC, have all launched or planned to launch AR-related products. AR start-ups have become capital darlings again, and financing acquisitions are frequent. AR-related patents and technologies have been exposed one after another, and AR technical executives and related talents have also become favorite for giants.
The analysis agency IDC judges that the sales of AR glasses and headsets will continue to grow in the next five years, and it is expected that sales this year will reach about 1 million units, and 23.4 million units will be sold by 2025, which means that it will increase by 2000% in 5 years.
Giants are working hard on the AR field
According to the report of US CNBC, on March 31, the United States announced that it had awarded Microsoft a contract of up to $21.9 billion (worth approximately 143.7 billion yuan) for providing at least 120,000 AR (augmented reality) devices.
In 2018, Microsoft received a $480 million contract to provide the Army with a prototype of the Integrated Vision Augmentation System (IVAS). The new agreement will involve the provision of a production version.
The HoloLens is priced at $3,500, allowing people to see holograms covered in the actual environment and interact with hands and voice. The IVAS prototype tested in 2019 showed a map and a compass, and it had thermal imaging to reveal people in the dark. The system can also display the target of the weapon.
After the above-mentioned contract, Microsoft will rely on HoloLens to produce holographic glasses. This device is also called a mixed reality head-mounted display, or an integrated visual enhancement system. The goal of augmented reality is to put the virtual world on the screen and interact with the real world.
Currently, the news that Apple is about to launch AR headsets has been spreading, and the industry has been talking about it. When Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by technology media workers recently, he did not conceal Apple’s ambitions for AR. Cook said: “I think AR has greater potential in the future, and it is extremely important for Apple’s future.” In Cook’s view, AR will change the way people communicate with friends, colleagues, and family members, and it will also reshape the way of communication in fields such as healthcare, education, gaming, and retail. Through mobile phones, AR has achieved rapid development in certain areas, and it is believed that this technology has even greater potential in the future.
As a holographic AR company listed on NASDAQ, WIMI Hologram Cloud recently completed the financing of $83.8 million. It is said that WIMI has received a total of $170 million in financing since its listing in April 2020, once again causing it to attract public attention. It utilizes its strong technical capabilities and infrastructure to provide excellent products and services. Moreover, WIMI has won the bid for China Mobile and the second phase of the holographic remote interaction of the media cloud platform and is redefining China Mobile’s communication method through “5G + holographic remote”. WIMI’s core business is holographic AR technology for software engineering, media manufacturing services, cloud, and big data.
WIMI Hologram Cloud was founded in 2015, and it focuses on holographic cloud services, mainly in vehicle-mounted AR holographic HUD, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR, head-mounted light field holographic equipment, holographic semiconductor, holographic cloud software, holographic car navigation, and other professional fields, covering multiple links of AR technology, including holographic vehicle-mounted AR technology, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR technology, holographic vision semiconductor technology, holographic software development, holographic AR advertising technology, holographic AR entertainment technology, holographic ARSDK payment, interactive holographic communication, and so on. It is a holographic cloud comprehensive technical solution provider.
Multiple factors boost the outbreak of AR
Faced with the layout of giants and the favor of capital, the industry believes that AR has only shown the tip of the iceberg of strength. AR is supported by key technologies, 5G communication connectivity, the display power of near-eye display devices, the endurance of battery product iterations, and the ability to realize rich application scenarios. In recent years, AR-related key technologies and industrial chains such as near-eye display, network transmission, and perception interaction have improved and progressed to varying degrees, which has become an objective factor in boosting AR’s outbreak.
5G accelerates the development of VR/AR
Compared with 4G, 5G has the characteristics of high communication rate, ultra-low latency, and high connection density, which are helpful for the penetration and popularization of VR/AR in terms of the network environment, transmission bandwidth, and latency. Specifically, first of all, the highest transmission speed of the 5G network can reach 10Gb/s, which is conducive to the transmission and real-time playback of ultra-high-definition content above 8K. Secondly, the edge cloud helps reduce the time of data transmission and feedback, and at the same time, the delay under 5G is less than 10ms, which helps reduce the dizziness of using VR/AR devices
With the continuous advancement of chips, display technology, communication methods, and algorithms, major manufacturers have made efforts in the AR/VR field. With the arrival of 5G, AR/VR will become the most anticipated application scenario.
The epidemic accelerates the implementation of AR scenarios
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, digital technologies represented by big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and mobile Internet have played a vital role. More and more companies have carried out “cloud office”, “online operations”, “intelligent manufacturing”, and “contactless production”. The new models and new business formats of the digital economy are developing rapidly.
This epidemic has also made more people feel the efficiency improvement brought by 5G+ multiple emerging technologies on a large scale for the first time, and the pace of integrative development of 5G and various economic and social fields is expected to accelerate. The global economic and technological trends are greatly affected by the epidemic. VR/AR has undoubtedly become one of the few industries that stand out during the epidemic. Under quarantine or lockdown policies of various countries, more users try to use VR/AR equipment for work, study, or entertainment, and sales of VR/AR terminal equipment have risen accordingly.
Policies boost the development of science and technology
After the launch of 5G, the first scenario application will accelerate the development of VR/AR, and the growth rate of the Chinese market will be higher than that of the global market. Therefore, with the blessing of 5G, the communication transmission shortcomings of immersive game scenes such as VR/AR will be compensated, and it is expected that the commercial use of VR/AR in immersive games will be accelerated. According to the research of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the global virtual reality industry scale is close to 100 billion yuan, and the compound annual growth rate of 2017-2022 is expected to exceed 70%. According to Greenlight’s forecast, the global virtual reality industry exceeded 200 billion yuan in 2020, including 160 billion yuan in the VR market and 45 billion yuan in the AR market. In addition, for the Chinese market, according to IDC’s latest “IDC Global Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide”, by 2023, China’s AR/VR market spending will reach $65.21 billion, which is higher than the forecast in 2019 ($6.53 billion). At the same time, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2018 to 2023 will reach 84.6%, which is higher than the 78.3% growth rate of the global market.
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