During CES the focus is mostly on all the new products and technologies. As a side note CTA also dishes out some market news that often gets overlooked. Here is a short summary on how CTA and Accenture see 2018 developing for the hottest topics in the industry.
CTA showed in the following chart what technologies maybe experiencing the highest growth in the current year.
CTA sales forecasts 2018
As can be seen, the growth rates for the various market segments are quite different and a little surprising. While smart speakers and smart home devices are on the path of strong growth, the time for wearables as a growth market seems to be over.
A little bit more surprising is the forecast that TVs, Drones and VR all will achieve market growth between 10% and 20%. TVs really? For years this market has been weak and now it may be single-handedly carrying the growth of the whole consumer electronics industry, based on the install base. Did I mention that this growth is for 4K Ultra HD TVs? As so often, the important info is in the fine print. Nevertheless, CTA is expecting a strong showing for TVs this year.
They also see VR with strong growth in 2018 based on a 25% increase in unit sales for a total of 4.9 million units. Since the revenue only grows by 18% they expect price decreases to continue in this year. Alternatively the sales of low end headsets must make up a higher percentage compared to 2016, not a very likely scenario.
Looking at AR/VR, Accenture provided info on a survey that reached 21,000 respondents in 19 countries. According to their survey, consumers are interested in AR/VR experiences that exceed just gaming and add to their day to day life experience. These include:
- 67% want to learn more about a place they are visiting
- 67% want to learn through AR/VR
- 61% want to visualize clothing they are buying
- 58% want to view 3D manuals
- 54% want to shop for household items and furniture
- 47% want to play games.
Considering these results, is the industry focusing on the wrong content so far? The interesting question is what percentage of these 21,000 respondents already own a AR/VR headset in any form and if those percentages are the same as for newbies.
Another answer is even more interesting; 55% of the respondents agree and strongly agree with the idea to replace their smartphone with a wearable solution that has all the functionality of smartphone but works “through voice, augmented reality and hologram interfaces”. Did they just describe the first successful AR headset from Apple or what?
Analyst Comment
Of course these forecasts are somewhat optimistic as they are prepared by or on behalf of the CTA. Nevertheless, CTA does not create numbers out of thin air and they are typically result of surveys of consumers and industry insiders. They typically are right on the trends, but not necessarily with the absolute numbers. (NH)
