Maturing of XR: Meta’s Revenue Milestone, Apple’s Market Excitement, and New Industries Expansion
Today, let’s explore the world of XR (extended reality), where innovation meets opportunity like never before. Join us as we navigate through the latest financial breakthroughs, market trends, and industry shifts reshaping the XR landscape.
Let’s turn our spotlight to Meta, whose recent unveiling of the Quest 3 has sent shockwaves across the XR domain with a staggering $1 billion in quarterly revenue. Meta Reality Labs has solidified its leading role in the XR sphere. With significant investments totaling $5.72 billion in quarterly costs, Meta’s strategic foresight underscores an unwavering dedication to pioneering new frontiers within the XR sector, positioning them as frontrunners poised for sustained growth and innovation. And the market appreciates this dedication – at the beginning of February, the company’s shares closed up more than 20% after it reported a tripling in the fourth-quarter profit and issued its first-ever dividend.
Meta’s financial highlights following Quest 3 launch
Another industry leader, Apple, with its reputation for design excellence and seamless ecosystem integration, establishing for themselves an inauguration of a new concept of spatial technology, entered the XR market with its Apple Vision Pro headset, stirring both consumers and investors. According to Business Insider, Apple sold around 200,000 Vision Pro headsets even before the devices entered offline sales (in February, these numbers will notably increase) and already demonstrated numerous integrations and use cases, signifying a vital milestone of the industry shift. Moreover, stating many interest in the enterprise segment, Apple envisions business as a prime market for the Apple Vision Pro headset.
Apple Vision Pro Sales Before Offline Sales
In the meantime, this disruption has sparked a surge in Meta’s sales as many consumers have opted for Meta’s offerings due to their favorable price-to-quality ratio, further solidifying Meta’s position in the VR landscape.
Meanwhile, this progress is about more than just numbers. At Lucid Reality Labs, we focus on its impact. We observe this well-envisioned paradigm shift of the XR industry with technology applications extending beyond entertainment into business and enterprise.
From immersive training simulations to augmented workplace collaboration, XR technologies are revolutionizing corporate practices and delivering tangible results, tapping into the potential for investment.
The user’s landscape looks promising as well. According to Statista, the user penetration rate on the XR market is projected to be 52.8% in 2024 and is expected to increase to 55.9% by 2028. By adding the announcements for the subsequent launches in the following years, for example, Quest 3 Lite and Meta Quest Pro 2, or should we call it Mirror Lake, and many more brands, the market growth and saturation will increase rapidly.
The other evident factor that XR is the new Big Game for the market is use cases that continually disrupt the status quo of the technology realm these years. With its enormous potential of XR elevated by Artificial Intelligence benefits and substantial mature competition, a headset race on the market is a win-win game.
Amidst ongoing discussions on XR technology’s potential, let’s spotlight concrete business benefits through compelling case studies already delivered by Lucid Reality Labs for our enterprise partners.
Medtronic’s Intubation Training Simulation, crafted in collaboration with Lucid Reality Labs, is revolutionizing medical training by enhancing the skills of healthcare professionals and streamlining training processes, resulting in cost savings and improved patient outcomes. Adding the AI-powered medical assistant to this solution could add value, ensure individual approaches, and provide feedback based on the latest knowledge and best practices.
“The domain practitioners have long envisioned such a tool, and we believe that future integration of AI to this solution will help with resolving critical challenges and ensure guidance and tailored support and supervision to the complex requirements the practitioners work with,” says Dr. Patrick Schoettker, a distinguished physician and medical researcher focusing his efforts on anesthesiology and difficult airway curriculum, a Professor and Head of the Department of Anesthesiology at Lausanne University Hospital.
Doxy.Me‘s Mental Health Exposure Therapy Solution, a groundbreaking platform leverages XR technology, enhances patient engagement and outcomes while showcasing XR’s potential to disrupt conventional healthcare practices and take mental health to another level of comfort and effectiveness.
Brian Bunnell, PhD, Director of Research at doxy.me, underlines that Virtual Reality-based exposure therapy can address the limitations of tele-exposure therapy, opening new pathways for more efficacious remote practice. “Combining telehealth and Virtual Reality can extend provider treatment options and improve patient care experiences,” said Brian Burnell.
American Red Cross. Revolutionizing lifeguard training, together with the American Red Cross, Lucid Reality Labs introduces a Best-in-class standardized VR experience developed in collaboration with top aquatic experts. This evidence-based, hands-on solution focuses on cognitive skills like surveillance, and visual scanning to identify drowning while honing skills such as observation, decision-making, and effective communication, all under realistic, time-sensitive conditions.
In the US, 300.000 lifeguards are trained and certified in the Red Cross curriculum yearly. After the full-scale launch of the Lifeguard VR in 2024, it will be introduced to this training as well.
Discover more Lucid Reality Labs’ use cases.
As the XR industry continues to evolve and mature to a scale unseen before, enterprise investors have a distinct opportunity to capitalize on its potential. With Meta leading the charge, Apple challenging the status quo, and XR applications reshaping businesses, the future of XR is beyond promising. So, fasten your seatbelts because the XR revolution is just beginning, and the opportunities are limitless for those ready to seize them.
Read also: How Qualcomm and Apple are boosting the immersive technologies industry