After three consecutive years of false fire, with the withdrawal of capital and the decay of user interest, no one in 2017 finally declared that "This year is the first year of VR."
The virtual fire of VR began in 2014. Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire Oculus, a VR startup company. This triggered a global VR boom. Numerous VR practitioners, investment institutions, and media have all advocated that the "VR first year" has arrived. In the first quarter of 2016, the global venture capital investment in VR/AR once reached US$1 billion.
However, with the retreat of capital, VR eventually fell heavily on the ground. According to media reports, in the first quarter of 2017, the global venture capital investment in VR/AR was only 200 million U.S. dollars, which was a sharp drop of 80%. From the second half of 2016, a large number of VR hardware and content startups have died. In the past two years, many VR experiential shops have expanded because of losing money. ••••
As the industry starts to enter a low tide, many people think that VR is just a bubble that capital has spawned, and even led to the discussion of whether “2017 is the end of VR or not?â€. For many people put forward the "VR final conclusion adjustment", the author has different views.
01
Capital bubble? This is only a necessary stage for the development of new technologies. •••
For the development of a new technology, the industry uses the Gartner technology maturity curve for analysis and evaluation.
Any technology, starting from the laboratory's development, the public expects it to experience such a curve.
â–² Graph: Gartner's methodology for the maturity curve
Trigger period: The first generation of products appears, but the user's demand is immature, the characteristics of the products are not mature, and more is from the customization needs.
Expected expansion period: Technology will soon attract the attention of media and venture capital, accompanied by a large amount of funds entering this field, so that both the users and the people in the industry, the expectation of this technology will be higher and higher, even by Hype to a vertex.
Disillusionment period: Soon, there will be some users who start to try products, and when these products are adopted, they will find far less than expected hopes, and they will not be able to meet the demand, and some of the more negative evaluations will begin to be reported; VR At this stage, it was criticized for a series of issues such as heavy and bulky products, lack of clarity, dizziness, poor interaction, and lack of content.
Because of the huge gap between high expectations and low maturity, people's attention to this technology will decrease. However, manufacturers and related technology suppliers will not give up, but continue to improve the product, which is the stage where technology and products really mature. But from the outside world, whether it is media reports or public opinion will be less hot than in the past two years.
Maturity: In fact, after experiencing this wave of troughs, the technology and products will gradually become mainstream, more mature products will also appear, and related services will gradually improve. When the curve goes up from the trough, it means that this technology and product are mature and the service is mature, which can help users to better accept this technology and product.
Mainstreaming period: The more technology goes backwards, the more mature the product becomes, and it enters the mainstream stage of the market. At this time, the product will relatively enter a stage of price competition.
This is the process that any kind of new technology development must go through, and VR is no exception!
02
Capital winter is not industrial winter
Therefore, it is not necessary to be so pessimistic about VR. After all, this round of development boom has only been for three years, and it is far less than the conclusion that the industry still has a future. This is also what most VR practitioners know about the current industry.
At the 2017 China VR/AR Industry Summit Forum on May 20th, many guests from AMD, Big VR, Digital Model, Dressmaker, and Trinidad also expressed similar views.
â–²Figure: 2017 China VR/AR Industry Summit Roundtable discussion, guests (from left to right): Da Peng VR Chief Strategy Officer Zhang Li, AMD Asia Pacific Technical Director Lu Yingrui, Sanmu Monkey Technology Marketing Director Yang Bo, Dressing Up CEO Gou Yudong
Among them, Da Peng VR chief strategy official Zhang Li clearly pointed out that the development of VR is a steady forward process, the winter of capital is not necessarily the winter of the industry. He believes that 2017 will be the beginning of VR's real landing, for three reasons:
1. The users of VR are improving, and the actual purchase requirements of VR are being stimulated.
Zhang Li said that through the comparison of the Baidu Index (popularity) of the VR keyword and the Tmall Index (purchase), it can be seen that although the popularity of VR is decreasing, the consumer demand of users is actually increasing.
IDC's report also showed that in the first quarter of 2017, VR headsets shipped 2.3 million units, Samsung Gear VR shipments reached 490,000 units, and Sony PS VR followed 429,000 units. HTC Vive and Oculus were 199,000 units and 100,000 units respectively. This shows that VR users are entering a phase of relatively stable growth.
2. The supply chain began to improve and began to support VR
Because of the current technical bottlenecks and supply chain reasons, VR devices today are expensive, cumbersome, unclear, and dizzy. However, with the development of technology and the improvement of the supply chain, these problems will be solved. In 2017, the electronic supply chain began to consider the needs of VR. For example, Lu Yingrui, AMD's Asia-Pacific Business Director, explained at the summit the many optimizations that AMD has made on VR for graphics cards to support VR for a better experience. In addition to AMD, chip companies such as Qualcomm, Intel, ARM, Torch Core, and Rockchip also have specialized VR solutions. On the screen side, Samsung, Tianma, Sharp and other manufacturers also improved their technology to provide clearer, higher refresh rate screens. There is also Silicon Valley digital-to-analogue for the "Mobile phone + VR" transmission protocol and Type-C interface to promote, in order to achieve smoother data transmission ••••
Perhaps the promotion effect of these upstream companies will take some time to gradually show up, but "supply chain began to consider the demand for VR" itself, it means that VR has made great strides in the industrial ecology • • • •
3, software, content ecology began to mature
With the release of Google Day Dream and Microsoft Hololens, on the operating system, the trend of "Mobile VR with Google, PCVR with Microsoft" began to appear. The two major operating system giants have standardized the work and productization of VR and have also laid a good foundation for VR software content ecology. When the standard of VR operation level was established, the content level began to multiply. VR content platforms at home and abroad have also begun to take shape and are widely deployed. Baidu, LeTV, Storm, Lanting Digital, and VR VR have all entered the VR content field. The situation of VR content shortage will also be gradually improved. •••
03
In the winter of capital, the difference between giants and rookies
The future is bright, but the road is tortuous •••
Under the current cold winter predicament, it will not be easy to survive in this area of ​​VR. In this regard, giants and start-up companies also have their own gameplay.
To enter the industry to harvest at the bottom of capital has always been a great show for giants. Google and Microsoft each launched their own VR operating system, in order to occupy the lead. Tencent and Ali also tested VR on entertainment and e-commerce platforms respectively, and even rumors that Apple will launch VR products. China’s largest private media and entertainment group, Ray Media, which focuses on film and television, is also actively deploying the VR industry to develop a project to B.
Compared with giants, startups are more focused on exploring new profit models. After all, in the cold winter of capital, maintaining the survival of enterprises is the top priority. As a result, these startup companies began to seek B-side transformation, entertainment, education and enterprise-level application solutions have become a breakthrough in the new commercialization of VR. Dressing up CEO Gou Yudong believes that VR has a lot of subdivided areas such as games, education, and tourism. The B-side market in these areas is an undeveloped processing area. The only challenge is the fragmentation of demand. Extracting different needs, precise solutions for the industry should be carefully considered by all.
For example, Beijing Weishiku and Qingdao Heijing Technology have begun to focus on the development of VR education programs. The costumer and Xiamen Buge VR have launched solutions for VR home improvement and VR viewing, and many VR content companies have begun to provide services to customers with needs. Customized content production ••••
For the VR industry, these dynamics are all positive signs that the industry is still developing. With the efforts of many practitioners, VR is expected to go through the ups and downs in the early stages of 2017 and make breakthroughs in key technologies and issues. It will present itself in a more mature image to consumers and re-energize the vitality of the VR industry.
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