Virtual Reality for Enterprise and Industrial Markets

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While enterprise markets have made use of professional-grade virtual reality (VR) technology for some time, the recent debut of consumer-grade VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) from companies like Facebook/Oculus, HTC, and Samsung has raised the profile of VR immeasurably and, more importantly, sparked the potential for enterprise VR use cases leveraging consumer-grade VR solutions. In addition to the availability of low-cost consumer grade VR solutions, the adoption of VR among enterprises is motivated by the opportunity for increased productivity, improved results, and efficiency through the greater level of immersion that VR applications offer compared to more conventional means.

Even with the continuing growth, however, market adoption of enterprise VR use cases is moving slower than previously anticipated due to market acceptance lagging behind for the education and location-based entertainment use cases. Lagging market acceptance in these two use cases is due to a slower adoption of smartphone HMDs; in education because of the cost of hardware and access to smartphones, and in location-based entertainment because many venues desire higher immersion/quality VR experiences, which smartphone HMDs cannot deliver. Despite some retrenching in the market, however, there is momentum and accelerated activity, particularly for location-based entertainment and medical therapy use cases. Tractica forecasts that worldwide enterprise VR hardware and software revenue will increase from $1.0 billion in 2018 to $12.6 billion annually by 2025.

This Tractica report provides global market forecasts for the period from 2016 through 2025 for annual unit shipments and associated revenue for VR hardware and content in the enterprise sector. The analysis covers HMDs as well as software applications and content creation tools. Market sizing and forecast data is segmented by five major regions and five different application markets are examined including education, virtual prototyping/3D modeling, location-based entertainment, training and simulation, and medical therapy.