Exciting new Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) devices tend to steal the spotlight, but often the supporting platforms for those devices are of equal or greater importance; according to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, the competitive landscape for Extended Reality (XR) platforms will see shifts in major players, key partners, and enabling technologies over the next five years.
“After a handful of stops and starts for the XR market over the past decade, there are a few key drivers that are accelerating growth today: major players are more established, the popularity of no-display smart glasses, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) broadly enabling new use cases while improving existing applications,” says Eric Abbruzzese, XR Markets and Technologies Research Director at ABI Research. “The XR platform, including hardware, software, and services, will grow and mature to support an expected increase of users and use cases across market segments.”
XR devices, including AR smart glasses and VR headsets, are expected to grow over the next five years. ABI Research estimates more than 80 million shipments by 2030 across these categories. The newest device type included in this forecast is the “no-display smart glass”, often called AI glasses, thanks to its focus on enabling AI interaction; these devices are expected to grow at a 48% CAGR through 2030. Meta Ray Ban is the most well-known and successful product in this category today, though competitors are expected.
“To support these devices, the enabling elements attached to them—be it operating systems, content stores, developer communities, or key technology components—will grow in kind,” Abbruzzese explains. Meta, Apple, and Google are positioned as technology incumbents, each with end-to-end platforms that include all these elements. They will work to strengthen XR as a standalone product within their portfolio and weave XR into other relevant offerings where possible. Others will operate as partners, such as Samsung as a hardware OEM, or Mediatek and Qualcomm as chipset partners, and combine for a cohesive XR offering.
XR hardware, Operating Systems (OS), content, and development platforms are key segments where platform differentiation and advancement will be most impactful. “An open relationship between these segments across the entire XR ecosystem is critical. Siloed platforms will be increasingly difficult to scale successfully, with the market instead favoring cross-platform and hardware-agnostic approaches and open-source technologies and solutions when possible. This will force companies to deliver on a wider swath of product and portfolio elements so that partnerships will be key,” Abbruzzese concludes. ABI Research