What They Say
Counterpoint Research put out an interesting chart that showed the split of market shipments of XR (AR and VR) by type. The chart doesn’t show anything that we haven’t already reported, but does highlight
- The impact of the Quest 2 headset in switching the market to stand-alone architecture
- The very low volume of AR devices compared to VR at this stage.
What We Think
Scale is probably the biggest challenge for AR at the moment. There are hard problems to solve but, at the moment, the volumes are too small to get the juices of big suppliers to flow. It reminded me that in a talk I gave at the Immersed 2018 event in Toronto, I identified the challenge of gaining the interest of big display makers as one of the biggest for the AR community.
Just to broaden this, scale is really important in other areas as well. I’m no medical specialist, but I heard recently that the massive resource thrown at RNA vaccines for Covid has had a dramatic effect on the idea of using RNA to treat cancer. Researchers saw great potential in this some years ago, but the pay-off was so far away in years that it was not possible to get companies to invest. The developments of the last couple of years have taken many years off that time scale and made the possible use of the technology really feasible. There may be some good news to come out of Covid – as there are often great advances in technology during big conflicts. (BR)
