2025 is coming, and as the middle of the decade approaches, it’s easy to forget where the XR market was in 2020.
The start of the decade marked a shift towards consumer acceptance of XR. The Meta Quest 2 became the leading VR headset thanks to its consumer-friendly mobile design and low cost.
However, in industry, XR solutions existed many years in advance, laying a foundation for today’s emerging AR/VR/MR sector.
Understanding how the XR hardware market is expected to change is necessary for companies that want to stay ahead of technology trends; if a company doesn’t understand the current cycle, it can become problematic over time.
Investing in the future is a common trait of successful companies, and if XR market forecasts are correct, investing in AR/MR headsets could be an important part of the next enterprise technology cycle.
In the first quarter of 2024, the IDC reported a substantial decline in global shipments of AR/VR headsets. According to the report, there was a 67.4 percent year-on-year decline in the first quarter. Interestingly, the decline mainly affected VR headsets, as potential buyers were more interested in MR/AR devices.
The rise of MR headsets
The decade started with VR headsets dominating the market, with the Quest 2 still topping the user stats on platforms like SteamVR in 2024.
In recent years, smart AR glasses and MR devices were reserved for niche enterprise and consumer use, but the tide appears to be turning.
ResearchAndMarkets’ recent ‘Smart Augmented Reality Glasses – Global Strategic Business Report’ states that MR holographic displays, such as Apple’s Vision Pro, are expected to grow at a CAGR of 58.4 percent through 2030.
As VR became mainstream, leading companies such as Meta and Apple began researching and developing AR/MR devices in the early 1920s.
This research initially led to the Meta Quest Pro, a business-oriented device that failed to take off; Apple Vision Pro then stole the MR thunder and gave XR another mainstream boost in 2024.
But the story continues in 2024, when Meta debuts the Meta Quest 3S, which looks to regain a foothold in the MR market with a low-cost Quest 2 esc device.
At Meta Connect 2024 last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Orion AR smart glasses, which looks to continue the resurgence in AR smart glasses that Meta is experiencing with the Ray-Ban Stories portfolio.
That said, it looks like Microsoft could potentially be working on a new device in response to expectations of modern MR headsets. The company recently dropped support for HoloLens and is also patenting AI-powered MR headset technology.
So it’s hard to cut through the hype and marketing to discover the true value of MR/AR XR Today exclusively speaking Frank Furnari, the CEO And founder of ARuVR, a cross-platform, award-winning immersive learning platform.
Furnari said:
“The contribution of large companies is crucial for growth and maturation. They not only advance technology, but also help create a sustainable and scalable market, paving the way for a more immersive and interconnected future.”
Will AR Smart Glasses Break Ubiquity Expectations?
While enterprise vendors such as Vuzix and RealWear have many years of experience rolling out AR and assistive reality glasses for businesses, the consumer world has yet to embrace the technology.
If consumer adoption increases, it could lead to more interest from enterprise customers, much like the Quest 2 boom, which had professionals wondering how to extract business value from the emerging technology.
Furnari added:
“For businesses, a cost-effective
However, market forecasters expect the slow adoption to slow down, following successful sales of the Meta Ray Ban Stories portfolio to smaller hardware vendors such as Xreal.
Meta’s Orion AR smart glasses have great potential. However, the device is still years away from the market, and Zuckberg’s company is only allowing trusted partners to use it to find exciting use cases.
The aforementioned ResearchAndMarkets report highlights that the global smart glasses market reached approximately 678,600 units in 2023, with a forecast growth of 13 million units by 2030, representing a CAGR of 53.0 percent from 2023 to 2030.
Is this average eye and hand tracking the future of XR interaction?
MR and AR wearables offer new forms of navigation, such as eye and hand tracking, potentially simplifying professional onboarding.
A report from Global Market Insights noted that the eye-tracking market was worth approximately $850 million by 2023, with an expected CAGR of over 30.5 percent between 2024 and 2032.
To answer this, you need to be familiar with the controller.
Furnari pointed out the importance of converging emerging technologies, explaining:
“Having AI engines on these devices will make usability very easy, and therefore the use cases and applications will be much broader than what we have today. The combination of high-quality AR technology, AI engines and design ensures that we have a bright future with these devices.”
The emergence of MR and AR devices, in addition to this new method of XR interaction, can bring many benefits, one of which comes from improving decision makers’ perception of XR.
Despite a growing understanding of XR in the business world, controllers can bring an unwanted sense of gamification to the workplace, which can cloud an unknowing team member’s perception of an XR solution.
Returning to the Orion device, the product also eschews traditional controllers for input, instead using a neural interface wristband that translates a user’s electrical brain activity into device input to remove user friction.
In an additional report from Evolve Business Intelligence, the group found that the market share of XR hardware and software is fairly even (hardware at 56 percent and software at 44 percent), showing signs of increased investment and interest in enterprise and consumer software services . .
This could also show that as AR/MR grows and alternative tracking input methods become more common, investment in services such as immersive training, collaboration, design and entertainment will also increase.
