Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Recently, a piece of news from the Financial Times has added a fire to the already hot XR market. According to the news, the famous Apple whistleblower Guo Mingyi and other sources have pointed out that Apple is expected to release its first AR / VR at this year's WWDC conference.

As the world's top technology company, Apple's every move can be seen as a bellwether for the entire consumer technology industry. The rumors about Apple's AR / VR have been around for a long time, and if they will launch related products in the WWDC in the first half of the year, it will undoubtedly greatly boost the confidence of the entire XR industry.

In fact, the popularity of the XR market has accumulated momentum in the past 2022. Take AR in XR as an example, global shipments of AR equipment reached 270000 units in 2022, while 100000 units were shipped in China. Overseas market is still the decisive place for consumer-grade AR brands.

At the same time, according to IDC, Chinese AR brands have performed well in the global consumer-grade AR glasses market. It is worth mentioning that Nreal shipped 100000 units in 2022, accounting for more than 1/3 of global AR headset annual shipments, ranking first in the world, creating a new AR market record.

At the same time, Rokid, TCL and other brands also have excellent performance, with Chinese brands occupying the third place among the top five brands. The strong performance of these AR brands indicates that the inflection point of consumer-grade AR brands is coming, and the era of mass consumption with smart space has come.

However, compared with the hot market, we are more concerned about the development trend and gratifying results of the XR industry represented by AR after the exploration and evolution in the past year. Next, let's review and sum up and get a glimpse of the industry's ambitions for the future.

VR stall, AR can be expected "the mission of the next generation computing platform is to promote the upgrading of the mobile Internet to the spatial Internet, to deeply integrate digital information with the real world, and to return to the original three-dimensional space experience of the human world, and its direction will be AR glasses."

This is what Xu Chi, founder and CEO of consumer AR glasses brand Nreal, said at the launch in August of this year.

When it comes to the development of XR, it is inevitable to compare VR with AR.

Both of them have attracted the attention of the global market and the industry almost at the same time before and after 2015, but the pace of development of VR and AR is not the same because of the differences in technological paths and other factors. In terms of VR, although the immersive experience makes it full of imagination in the fields of sports, education, medical treatment, automobile and so on, the development so far is still based on the experience of games and movies. And at present, the proportion of content services for games and movies has reached 9:1, which means that VR will replace traditional game manufacturers and computer game manufacturers in the coming period of time.

Because of the attribute of auxiliary display and integration with reality, AR naturally has more room to play in real fields such as communication, connecting everything and office, such as projecting translation results in reality when communicating with the outside world, using AR to view the running status of various devices and remote projection to achieve face-to-face office assistance, and so on. These more meta and more extensive scene applications make AR have more potential to become the next generation intelligent terminal. And productivity tools.

It can be seen that the differences in technology paths and attributes determine that it is easier for VR to make achievements in C-end games and movies, while it is easier for AR to give priority to practical productivity scenarios such as B-end office and commerce.

Therefore, from the consumer side point of view, the overall pace of VR development is faster. The basic technology path of VR is maturing, gradually focusing on hardware performance upgrading and software ecology establishment. Correspondingly, AR is still in the early stage of hardware exploration and development because of the more complex optical system and higher requirements for terminal lightweight, and expects further convergence of the technical route.

However, we have been taught from too many real-world cases and scripts: those who go first may not always be in the lead, or they may hit the wall first. Because the direction and pace should be consistent with the properties of the product, down-to-earth timing is the way forward. This has begun to prove in 2022.

The decline in sales of the industry giant Meta VR in 2022, affecting the collapse of the shares of upstream industrial chain companies, and the subsequent price increases and layoffs may be the most iconic event of VR development stall in the past year. On the other hand, many industry leaders have expressed their expectations for AR. For example, Apple CEO Cook praised AR in public more than once, saying in September last year: "in the future, it will be difficult for people to imagine life without AR. We have invested a lot of money in this area."

And Luo Yonghao also publicly expressed that he "believes that AR is the next generation computing platform" and invested in AR entrepreneurship by creating a thin red line company.

In fact, CTOnews.com believes that if VR is to create a completely virtual world, AR is pursuing the integration of the virtual world and the real world. From the point of view of the process that human development has accepted new things, "the integration of virtual and reality" and "let virtual auxiliary reality" are more like our next generally more acceptable state. Perhaps the world depicted by VR is indeed very dreamy and desirable, but it is also too far away. And AR is a more realistic, practical and down-to-earth future for human beings.

Consumer AR, since Google launched the first AR glasses Google Glass in 2012, AR is really known to the general public. But Google Glass was not a successful product because it was too advanced and untimely at that time. This seems to indicate that the development of AR will not be smooth.

As a matter of fact, since then, the volume and heat of the AR industry has always been lower than that of VR, and the most memorable out of the circle was the popularity of the AR mobile game "Pok é mon GO" in 2016.

Since then, Apple's launch of the ARKit development platform in 2017 and the release of Microsoft HoloLens 2 have given AR some market attention, but it has also failed to attract more attention from consumers. Apple's AR platform has not been supported by specialized hardware, and HoloLens is prohibitive to ordinary consumers because the price is so high that it can only be aimed at the B side.

Looking back at the ups and downs of AR in recent years, an important reason why it is slower than VR is the lack of research on the consumer market. ToB has become the choice of the vast majority of players, because the consumer market has more stringent requirements for product maturity, lightweight, experience effect, etc., while the B-end market is much easier.

But is the easy thing the right thing?

There have been more responses to this question in the past year.

According to a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics, shipments of consumer-grade AR head-display devices will increase by 161% in 2022 compared with the same period last year. At the same time, IDC data also show that of the 270000 AR devices shipped worldwide in 2022, the consumer-grade AR brand shipped 170000 units worldwide. This is the first time that the shipment volume of consumer-grade AR has exceeded that of enterprise-grade AR brands, and consumer-grade AR brands have shown strong competitiveness.

And the two data institutions have highlighted a company, that is, the domestic AR equipment brand Nreal. According to Strategy Analytics, Nreal's market share reached 81% in the first half of 2022, ranking first. IDC also shows that Nreal shipped 100000 units in 2022, ranking first in the world. "Nreal's groundbreaking success in the AR headset market is undoubtedly a historic moment for the AR industry and a sign of AR glasses moving towards mass consumption," they said.

These achievements are obviously a milestone for AR's expansion into the consumer market, and at the same time inject confidence into the entire industry: the vast consumer market is very concerned about AR products, and contains strong demand and purchasing motivation.

In addition to Nreal,2022 year, whether it is OPPO, Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo mobile phones, PC enterprises, or Thunderbird, Rokid, Li Moke, Liangliang Horizon, AR rookies have also launched new AR products for consumers, and the application scenarios of the products also cover different directions such as watching movies, inscriptions, swimming, hearing impaired assistance, map navigation, cockpit service, outdoor cycling and so on.

When we talk about the popularity of AR in the capital market and the degree of attention in the industry over the past year, it is not difficult to imagine that these are the knock-on effects brought about by AR's turn to the consumer market.

The consumer market will be the major trend and core topic of the next development of AR.

It is no coincidence that the consumer market, which is based on the analysis of experience synthesis, has been opened at this point in time. CTOnews.com believes that there are mainly the following factors.

First of all, mobile phone manufacturers should test the water one after another, driving the upsurge of consumer-grade AR glasses. Because the ceiling of smartphone terminal innovation has emerged, the entire mobile phone market has continued to decline over the past year. Manufacturers are eager to find the next generation of general computing platforms other than mobile phones, and AR is the most suitable one.

For example, from the perspective of consumer scenarios, people's demand for screen size of computing terminals is constantly changing. in mobile scenes, we need smaller screens like mobile phones and tablets, and we need monitors or even projection screens when we work. It is very difficult when scenes and needs are interlaced, because it is impossible for us to take devices of different sizes with us at the same time, and AR has the screen properties of "big and small". It perfectly meets the needs of consumers.

Of course, there are many more factors that enable mobile phone manufacturers to focus on consumer-grade AR products almost at the same time. The volume of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers in the consumer market has objectively played a key role in promoting the expansion of consumer-grade AR.

In addition, the concept of meta-universe has done an indispensable pre-market education for the opening of consumer-level AR, so that consumers have enough understanding of AR and the world depicted by meta-universe. At the same time, the concept of meta-universe also urges the capital market to pay close attention to consumer-grade AR, paving the way for the development of the industry.

Finally, and most importantly, the consumer products launched by AR terminal manufacturers have indeed won the recognition of many consumers in the experience.

Take the Nreal Air that we mentioned earlier about mass production of 100000 units as an example. On the JD.com platform, when the number of product reviews reached 5000 +, it still maintained a good rating of 99% of users. Almost every consumer mentioned that the screen was "bright in color and clear in picture", as well as watching the final on a more than 100-inch screen during the World Cup, which brought a thrilling experience, not dizzy, comfortable to wear, and not tired at all in bed.

Most consumers have fully affirmed the most important picture, viewing effect, wearing comfort, operation convenience and so on.

These praise from consumers, it is easy to form a positive spiral effect in consumer groups, so that more and more users begin to pay attention to these AR products prepared for them.

It is no exaggeration to say that experience is the most decisive link in opening the consumer AR market.

Because to sell the product to the consumer, it is necessary to take experience as the first element. In this process, it is inevitable to overcome the difficult and painful points that have always existed in AR products, so it is also a difficult road.

In the past, due to the imperfect display and interaction technology of AR devices, consumers often experienced dizziness and fatigue after using AR glasses for a long time, and the way to interact with AR devices was also very limited. With the improvement of optics, chip, 5G and other technologies, the display effect and computing power have been improved, bringing about a breakthrough in the product experience of consumer-grade AR glasses. In terms of the size, weight and shape of headsets, consumer-grade AR products have broken the public perception of "bulky headsets". The portable AR glasses dominated by Nreal liberate the volume and weight of AR headsets.

In recent years, the ecological problem of AR, which has been criticized by consumers, has also been solved. at present, consumer-grade AR glasses can be compatible with smart terminals, including mobile phones, laptops, handsets, game consoles and even more. The Nreal Air's good compatibility with popular gaming devices such as the Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch, Xbox series X / S and PS5 makes them ideal accessories for gamers.

As we said earlier, it is an indisputable fact that smartphone innovation has encountered bottlenecks in the consumer market. At the same time, under the trend of mobility, consumers' requirements for terminal screen size are destined to become more and more flexible, and it is an inevitable trend for screen size to get rid of the shackles of device size. In this case, the digital screen is almost the only solution, and the AR is the best device to carry the digital screen.

With the consumers' acceptance of the digital screen getting higher and higher, it is inevitable that AR rises from dormant to rising, and from B end to broader C end.

At the same time, in November 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments issued the Action Plan for the Integration of Virtual reality and Industrial applications (2022-2026), which proposed that by 2026, the overall scale of China's virtual reality industry will exceed 350 billion yuan. The release of the policy will also further boost the take-off of consumer-grade AR.

The AR industry has experienced many years of ups and downs and energy storage, and now it is time to realize its value. Over the past year, we have been able to feel the long wind of a new era blowing quietly, and the whole industry may be waiting for a moment to take off.

Of course, the most important thing before this is whether the specific products and experiences can be improved day by day. I believe that under the guidance of Nreal and other AR brands, we can see that AR can take advantage of the wind to fly, is the most beautiful posture.

Drum wing dance when the wind, roar excited Qing song.

That day is coming.

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