Mobile Mixed Reality Market Value to Exceed $43 Billion by 2024, Driven by 5G & Edge Computing

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 world through a smartphone, tablet or smart glasses.

The new research, Augmented & Mixed Reality: Impact Assessments, Sector Analysis & Forecasts 2019-2024, identified 5G networks and edge computing as two key emerging technologies that will accelerate the development of mixed reality services in 2020.

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Emerging Technologies to Usher in Second Wave of Smart Glasses

The research 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 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 minimise 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.

Smartphone Mixed Reality to Account for 75% of Consumer Revenues by 2024

The research forecast 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.

Research author Sam Barker remarked, “We expect social media applications to account for 40% of all consumer mixed reality revenues by 2024. 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”.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.