Research: Global VR Industry Landscape Grows 40% Over Last Quarter

Today The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) released its quarterly global virtual reality (VR) industry landscape, featuring dozens of companies developing apps, infrastructure, platforms and tools for the ecosystem. The VR Fund is led by industry luminaries Tipatat Chennavasin and Marco DeMiroz and is the world’s most active early-stage VR/AR investment firm. The latest worldwide VR industry landscape is available here.

Following are key industry takeaways from the past quarter:

• Overall the number of companies included in the landscape grew over 40 percent with the largest area of growth in content companies searching for apps to drive head mounted display (HMD) adoption.
• Gaming and entertainment nearly doubled in size with major players as well as well-funded, new companies in both the U.S. and Asia. Even with a relatively slow start, smart indie studios generated solid revenue to move beyond sustainability to profitability. Traditional VCs also stepped in to make content and application bets in VR with the increase in data since consumer launch. Additionally, major gaming players in Asia embraced VR dedicating more resources to it.
• Education, enterprise, healthcare and journalism experienced healthy growth as well in the non-games and non-entertainment categories. In particular, advertising and analytics saw solid funding.
• With tools and platforms, there was a rise in VR content creation and management systems allowing companies to quickly get out native VR apps or Web VR experiences to their customers using 360 video and photos. In addition, there was a lot of activity on the 3D audio side, most notably with the entrance of Korea’s G’Audio and Valve’s acquisition of Impulsonic.
• Regarding infrastructure, more major players announced tethered VR HMDs. Windows added its own VR platform launching with major partners including HP and Lenovo. With the low price point and a focus on enterprise, this could be the huge push that makes VR mainstream. The dream of an all-in-one mobile headset with position tracking and full 1:1 gesture control is expected to happen within the coming years.