Immersive Gaming and Content Platforms are Finally Here
Virtual Reality (VR) is about to become mainstream and could be a $7 billion market by 2018. Numerous head-mounted displays are in development (but not commercially available) with Facebook’s Oculus, Samsung, and Sony leading the pack, and Nintendo not far behind. If Samsung’s Gear VR remains wireless, it could dominate the mobile gaming space since 78% of the world’s 1.2 billion gamers are mobile. Oculus could evolve into Facebook’s next generation social networking platform in addition to providing interactive immersive play for Facebook’s 1.3 billion subscribers.
Augmented Reality (AR) is already here, with numerous companies servicing the retailing and engineering sectors not to mention Google, which led a $542 million funding round for Magic Leap, an AR startup whose product hasn’t even been announced.
We detail some of the more interesting technologies in this report and highlight several companies participating in the market including Sophic Capital client Spectra7 Microsystems (SEV-TSXV).