Much of the currently available market data points towards the continued growth of the virtual reality (VR) market, with some research pointing towards the consumer VR market being worth $40 billion (USD) by the year 2020. But it isn’t just consumer VR that is on the rise, enterprise VR is seeing its share of growth, too.
Research conducted by SuperData Research suggests that investments by companies into enterprise VR will reach $167 million in 2017. VR enterprise investments reached a total of $146,730,000 in 2016, which SuperData analysts say shows companies are realising the growing importance of VR for purposes other than videogames.
The enterprise segment of the market covers a range of areas including education, healthcare, transportation, engineering, design and retail, among others. VRFocus has previously reported on a number of these areas, such as VR technology for virtual prototyping, VR to help train doctors in skills from surgery to breaking bad news, and software that allows for holiday planning entirely in VR.
SuperData also found that corporate research and development annual spend would reach $4,036,578,000 by the end of 2017, and increase from the figure of $3,350,360,000 from 2016.
Previous reports from SuperData and other market research companies have shown that the VR industry may have had something of a slow start, compounded by supply problems with the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR, but is now experiencing decent growth and expansion from being purely an entertainment product to being a tool used by a variety of businesses.
VRFocus will bring you further information on VR market research when it becomes available.