Dear Colleagues,

In the technology space, it’s vital that your organization stay on top of prevailing trends in your respective industry. This extends to keeping tabs on the competition or, if you’re seeking a solution provider, weighing your options. That’s why ABI Research released its 40 Technology Companies To Watch In 2023 whitepaper to better understand which tech firms are winning in terms of innovation and implementation of their technology products/software.  

Augmented Reality (AR) is confidently at the precipice of mass market ubiquity. This has been an expected outcome for years, but barriers in price, hardware and software maturity, ease of use, and, ultimately, end-user value have held it back. However, in today's augmented reality market, more activity and tangible products are in place than ever before, and from established names. To provide you with a  better understanding of this growing market, we’ve compiled 7 augmented reality charts to tell the story of these immersive technologies.

Integrating Augmented Reality (AR) into the enterprise opens the door for new, innovative ways for the workforce to carry out their tasks. As pointed out in the blog post Use Cases of the Enterprise Metaverse and Immersive Collaboration (with Examples), AR is a key enabler for delivering immersive collaboration in the metaverse. Employee training was the leading enterprise AR use case in 2022, with additional value seen in areas such as remote assistance, workflow guidance, knowledge capture, and content creation. 

Few would argue that the automotive industry can be complex. Everything from model design to after-sales services requires a large sum of resources and pinpoint accuracy. To ease the pain, Augmented Reality (AR) can enhance nearly every facet of car manufacturing because it allows assembly line workers to go hands-free. Besides, most carmakers already have existing platforms that can take advantage of AR.

Augmented Reality (AR) has an important role to play in the modern and future workplace—remote assistance, training, workflow guidance, and knowledge capture can all be realized with AR deployment. However, integrating AR into existing platforms has proven to be a formidable challenge to early adopters because of the complexity of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) cohesion. Ultimately, Return on Investment (ROI) from AR technologies will be heavily dependent on how seamless the integration process is.

The market for consumer head-mounted displays (HMDs) will see 90.1 million shipments by 2027, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36.1%.The development of Virtual Reality (VR) for consumer entertainment dates all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s, but adoption has never taken off in a meaningful way until now. ABI Research forecasts that the total VR industry, including hardware, software, and services will be worth US$95 billion in 2027. Some enterprise markets are also seeing significant growth, driven by value in training and simulation, but consumer makes up the majority of the VR market.