COVID-19 Social Distancing and Remote Workforces Will Accelerate Growth in Immersive XR Collaboration Revenue to Over US$400 Million by 2025
ABI Research, a global tech market advisory firm, forecasts the market for Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) immersive collaboration solutions will exceed US$400 million by 2025, up from less than US$12 million in 2019. The communication and collaboration market in aggregate is seeing heightened interest and demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and expected lingering impacts of these unprecedented times are expected to accelerate adoption of newer technologies like Extended Reality (XR) and increase growth rates of more established markets like video conferencing hardware, which is expected to approach US$4 billion by 2025, up from US$2.4 billion in 2019.
“While no one knows for sure how much the COVID-19 pandemic will impact us, there is strong evidence to support there will be long-lasting effects, says Michael Inouye, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Some companies, like Facebook, have already amended work from home policies that extend beyond the current pandemic and provide early glimpses into what a new normal might look in the workplace. The communications market, much like streaming media, was already shifting to support a wider breadth of devices, services, and environments and the pandemic has accelerated these trends. The cancellation of events and inability to meet in person has driven demand for video calling services and tools and is opening new doors and exposure to more immersive solutions like XR,” Inouye adds.
In contrast to the video conferencing hardware market, where Cisco continues to lead and other companies, like Logitech, take advantage of the shifting landscape, the XR collaboration space is far more nascent and diverse. There is a relatively wide array of companies approaching the market from different angles and while industries like Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) and manufacturing have emerged as early adopters, the market is still undergoing significant development.
Immersive collaboration certainly has some big names like Microsoft, HTC, NVIDIA, Unity, and Facebook involved, but over 40 companies are targeting this aspect of the collaboration space. There have been some early market leaders like Glue, IrisVR, Spatial, The Wild, and VRtuoso, along with other companies offering different approaches to collaboration, ideation, or platform integrations like Imeve/Avatour, inlusion Netforms, Softspace, SPACES, and VR-on. “The high level of diversity in this aspect of the collaboration market will certainly be interesting to follow as the technologies, features, and services evolve and mature,” Inouye concludes.
