Augmented reality market to reach $100 billion by 2020

New research from ABI shows that the augmented and virtual reality markets are growing quickly. Augmented reality alone is projected to be a $100 billion industry by 2020. Smart glasses are seen to ship 21 million units in the said year with a CAGR of 78 percent between 2015 and 2020, according to the organization. Total revenues for the AR market will also have a high growth rate at 73 percent. The VR market, meanwhile, is expected to have similar growth rates, but at a smaller scale than its AR counterpart. While revenue growth will cut across all verticals, including education, gaming, health care, industrial and retail, the health care and industrial sectors are expected to be the largest, taking 54 percent of the market.

China manufacturers have been ready for growth in these markets, especially in the VR space. VR headsets are plentiful among China makers, as the basic form factor has pretty much been established. Larger companies such as Samsung are trying to get in early with more premium mobile VR headsets, but Google has shown that a cheap piece of folded cardboard can be just as effective.

Things such as smart glasses in the AR market are more complicated, but there are still many options from China manufacturers. Lenovo announced last year that it was launching its own smart glasses, and this year Beijing-based Alto Tech launched a product called Cool Glass One, which is functionally very similar to Google Glass at a third of the price. More sophisticated VR technology that does not rely on mobile phones is also in the works among China manufacturers, but there is not a lot available publicly yet. This is truefor international companies such as Oculus VR, which is unofficially considered the market leader and a subsidiary of Facebook. So the market may still be young, but China producers are not about to miss out on it.