How big is China’s virtual reality (VR) market?

Recently, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology stated at the 2019 World VR Industry Conference that China is one of the regions with active innovation and entrepreneurship in the global virtual reality industry, high market acceptance, and great development potential. The industry development presents the following characteristics:

First, the R&D and manufacturing system has basically been formed. China produces more than 70% of the world's high-end head-mounted VR terminals and has relatively complete design and manufacturing capabilities; second, user experience has been greatly improved; third, content resources are constantly enriched; fourth, the pace of integration and innovation is accelerating, and VR technology has been applied in education and training, design and manufacturing, exhibitions and displays, etc., and continues to empower traditional industries.

In recent years, with the popularity of AR/VR, various related technology products have been continuously launched, and Apple is also actively developing the virtual reality industry. Virtual reality technology is an important direction of simulation technology. It is a collection of simulation technology, computer graphics, human-computer interface technology, multimedia technology, sensor technology, network technology and other technologies. It is a challenging cross-technical frontier discipline and research field. It uses computers to generate a simulated environment. It is a multi-source information fusion, interactive three-dimensional dynamic vision and entity behavior system simulation that immerses users in the environment. It mainly includes simulated environment, perception, natural skills and sensor equipment.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, intelligent products such as virtual reality and robots are emerging in an endless stream and are constantly integrated into people's lives. With the continuous development of science and technology and industrial ecology, the concept of virtual reality is constantly evolving. At present, China's virtual reality is still in its infancy, and the market size is at a relatively small level, but the market size is growing very fast. Data shows that since 2015, the scale of China's virtual reality market has developed rapidly, growing from 1.58 billion yuan to 5.28 billion yuan in three years. It is predicted that the scale of China's virtual reality market will exceed 20 billion yuan in 2019.

Future trends:

In recent years, my country's virtual reality industry has developed rapidly, and related key technologies have become more mature, with continuous breakthroughs in technical fields such as picture quality, image processing, eye capture, 3D sound field, and machine vision. Wu Shengwu, deputy director of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the issuance of 5G licenses this year has opened up new horizons for the application of virtual reality technology in a wider range of fields. It is estimated that in 2021, my country's virtual reality market size will reach 54.45 billion yuan, with an annual compound growth rate of 91.2%. In the future, the virtual reality industry will show the following development trends:

Cloud VR acceleration. With the wireless VR terminal, business content and rendering can be uploaded to the cloud, becoming a cloud control platform solution that connects the collection, transmission, and playback processes. Rendering on the cloud means that rendering with high computational complexity is processed in the cloud.

The popularity of content production has increased, and derivative models have become increasingly active. The iteration pace of hardware equipment has gradually slowed down and the VR business model has become more mature. As the core link in realizing the value of virtual reality, content production has shown an upward trend in investment. Online and offline combined models such as experience venues and theme parks have been derived and attracted market attention.

Virtual reality + unleashes the innovative vitality of traditional industries. Virtual reality has rich business forms, great industrial potential and strong social benefits. A new round of technological and industrial revolution represented by virtual reality is ready to take off. The combination of virtual economy and real economy will bring revolutionary changes to people's production and lifestyle.

The hardware field will become the main battlefield. At present, the domestic virtual reality industry is still in its infancy, and no clear leader has yet been formed. The number of companies participating in the virtual reality field has increased significantly, mainly focusing on hardware research and development and application supporting fields.