Heads Up!

Posted on January 16, 2017 by The Weekly Commentary

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, and Virtual Reality (VR) are 3 of the next big thing(s) during the upcoming 5 to 25 years. The winner in AI is hard to predict at this time. Robotics applications are popping up in many applications. On the other hand VR’s time is just around the corner. Here is an article from ScienceInfo.net which spells this out.

The market for virtual reality (VR) technology could be a trillion-dollar industry by the year 2035, according to new research from a forward-looking analysis unit of the investment bank Citi.

Citi’s report arrived the same week that Sony released the PlayStation VR, a virtual reality headset aimed at owners of its video game console. 2016 has seen other high-profile headsets released by competitors, including the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. “VR is now firmly on the radar as an investment theme and is expanding as an industry and we believe it will be used in a wide range of applications and in a number of different industries going forward,” Kathleen Boyle, managing editor of Citi GPS (Global Perspectives & Solutions), said in the report on Thursday.

In fact, VR technology is already making its impact felt in several ways, with many companies exploring its applications. Beyond gaming and entertainment, VR is being used in the tourism sector, for education and in health care. In addition, DeLoitte published a survey in August which found 88 percent of mid-market companies (firms with annual revenue of between $100 million and $1 billion) were using some form of virtual or augmented reality as part of their business.

Citi predicts hardware sales, specifically of headsets, will be the primary driver of the industry’s growth and the VR market will be worth $692 billion by 2025, rising to more than a trillion by the following decade…. and is expected to rise to $4 trillion by 2030.

All major content providers are piling into this area, and user-generated content is poised to explode as more affordable 360-degree cameras come to market,” he said in a press release in August. We envision a world where ‘surroundie’ photos and videos become the next big thing, especially as 360-degree content can be so easily shared with more than 1.7 billion Facebook and YouTube users,” he added.

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