Mixed Reality Headsets Market is expected to traverse along a rather profitable growth path over the coming years, given the massive proliferation of the AR and VR technologies. As per a leading publication, high end virtual reality headsets such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift, HTC’s Vive and Sony’s PlayStation VR have together sold 1 million units in merely the third quarter of 2017. This is a clear indicator of the growth that mixed reality headsets market industry has been experiencing in recent times. Analysts have been predicting that the technology is likely to become all pervasive and will bring about an extensive across the arenas of education, entertainment, travel, healthcare and engineering.
Japan VR headsets market size, by application, 2016 & 2024 (USD Million)
The gaming industry has very quickly adopted virtual reality headsets and has emerged as a significant avenue for mixed reality headsets market expansion. More recently, mixed reality headsets industry has witnessed the introduction of VR headsets like PlayStation VR and Magic Leap that have revolutionized the modern digital gaming scenario.
Virtual reality headsets can provide a much more enriched movie experience as they cancel out external distractions and ambient lights. In this regard, mixed reality headsets market has amassed heavy gains, since more and more people have been preferring watching movies on VR headsets than in movie theatres. Film production companies like Paramount Pictures have observed this growing trend and have tapped into the growing mixed reality headsets industry with the introduction of virtual reality cinema theatre. Say, for instance, Paramount Pictures in partnership with the multiplayer virtual reality movie watching application Bigscreen will release the movie Top Gun 3D in a virtual reality cinema.
The healthcare domain has also been a major ground for mixed reality headsets market growth, driven by the fact that these headsets are increasingly being used in medical student training and surgery. Combining augmented reality with MRI and X-ray can give surgeons an enhanced sensory perception, thus minimizing risks in an operation. Medical students can simply use augmented reality to practice surgery that would train them in a more controlled environment.
Virtual reality headsets have also proven to be exceptionally profitable for the marketing industry. Numerous business verticals have increasingly adopted virtual reality, which has given a direct boost to the mixed reality headsets market. Virtual reality headsets can give a 360-degree panoramic view that can enthrall and totally immerse the audience, making a product or service much more palpable for the customer. Industry giants like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Disney have realized this potential and have involved virtual reality into their marketing campaigns. Retailers like Wayfair and IKEA have further stimulated mixed reality headsets industry by developing applications in which a customer can turn furniture around to see even its back and can virtually place the furniture in their room to see how it fits. This has not only improved furniture sales but has taken virtual reality technology a step further in the retail industry.
Head Mounted Devices (HMD) are the most common virtual reality devices at present and hence account for majority of shares of the mixed reality headsets market. NASA has commented that virtual reality headsets will be a standard tool used to train astronauts. It has also been reported that NASA astronauts will be using Microsoft HoloLens as a real-time instruction manual. Head mounted virtual reality devices can bring two engineers working in different parts of the world into the same virtual space so that they can work on a single project in a virtual environment. The unending scope of virtual reality will thus be a major stimulating factor for the mixed reality headsets industry between 2017 and 2024.
Mixed reality headsets market is expected to amass huge gains in the USA, subject to high product demand from the military and aerospace sectors. These headsets are massively used by the U.S. military to enhance military training environment for its troops. Europe the mixed reality headsets industry, on the other hand, has also gained momentum due to the product’s deployment in tourist destination such as theaters and museums. China is expected to emerge as one of the pivotal growth grounds for APAC mixed reality headsets market, driven by the supply of cheap labor and low cost of raw material. China is also working towards manufacturing more affordable mixed reality headsets, thereby enhancing its profitability landscape in the regional mixed reality headsets market.
Factors such as the high cost of devices, lack of high quality content, virtual reality’s capacity to disrupt normal social behavior as well as hurt vision with prolonged use have indeed hampered the growth of mixed reality headsets industry. Nonetheless, it has been observed that players such as Google, Microsoft, HTC, Sony and Dell are working towards making this technology more affordable as well as user friendly, which would provids a major stimulus to the growing mixed reality headsets market.