A new study from Juniper Research has found that the global value of the mobile mixed reality market will exceed $43 billion by 2024, rising from $8 billion in 2019. Mixed reality overlays interactive digital images and videos onto the real word through a smartphone, tablet or smart glasses.
The research group identified 5G networks and edge computing as two key emerging technologies that will accelerate the development of mixed reality services in 2020. Juniper urged smart glasses vendors to incorporate hardware to enable 5G and edge computing capabilities. It forecast that the enhanced content and services enabled by these technologies would usher in the second wave of smart glasses adoption by increasing the end users’ capabilities.
The research group also argued that leveraging cloud computing capabilities to deliver high-value mixed reality content is crucial to future success. It forecast that migrating processing power to the cloud would enable device vendors to reduce device sizes and minimize the social cost of public device use. It further forecast that mobile games multimedia apps categories will benefit most over the next five years, accounting for 67% of all smart glasses apps by 2024.
Juniper believes that 75% of consumer mixed reality will be attributable to smartphone apps by 2024. It found that the immediate base of nearly 6 billion smartphone users, combined with established content distribution in the form of app stores, will drive content development to smartphone devices.
“We expect social media applications to account for 40% of all consumer mixed reality revenues by 2024,” says research author Sam Barker. “Third party content delivered on these apps has been key to their success, therefore investment in content development frameworks will increase their app’s content library with minimal investment”.