Analyst firm IDC said in a report that the emerging augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headset market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 108.3% over 2015-2020 forecast period, reaching 76.0 million units by 2020.
The more affordable VR devices will continue to lead the market in terms of volume. However, IDC said it expects AR headsets to pick up momentum over the forecast as more affordable technologies and more OEMs enter the market.
IDC said it is currently tracking three categories of headsets: Screenless viewers, such as Samsung’s Gear VR; tethered head-mounted displays (HMDs), such as the HTC Vive; and standalone HMDs, such as Microsoft’s HoloLens.
“2016 has been a defining year for AR as millions of consumers were introduced to Pokemon Go and, on the commercial side, developers and businesses finally got their hands on coveted headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens,” said Jitesh Ubrani senior research analyst at IDC.
“AR may just be on track to create a shift in computing significant enough to rival the smartphone. However, the technology is still in its infancy and has a long runway ahead before reaching mass adoption.”
“Augmented reality represents the larger long-term opportunity, but for the near term virtual reality will capture the lion’s share of shipments and media attention,” said Tom Mainelli, program vice president for devices at IDC.
“This year we saw major VR product launches from key players such as Oculus, HTC, Sony, Samsung, and Google. In the next 12 months, we?ll see a growing number of hardware vendors enter the space with products that cover the gamut from simple screenless viewers to tethered HMDs to standalone HMDs. The AR/VR headset market promises to be an exciting space to watch.”
