TrendForce Jibang Consulting said that as meta-universe will promote more manufacturers to invest in the construction of virtual world, the areas of community communication, game entertainment, content creation, virtual economy and industrial applications will be the focus of development in recent years. In addition to the improvement of semiconductor computing efficiency and the expansion of low-latency high-speed network coverage, the popularity of VR/AR devices used by users will also become the key to the development of metacosmos industry. As a result, TrendForce Jibang Consulting estimates that global VR/AR device shipments will reach 12.02 million units in 2022, with an annual growth rate of 26.4%, of which Oculus and Microsoft still occupy the leading position in the consumer and commercial markets, respectively.

The integration of product price and system solution is the key to the success of VR/AR in consumer and commercial markets, and it is also the main reason why leading manufacturers can maintain competitive advantage. however, considering hardware gross profit and profit, it is difficult to achieve a competitive pricing strategy, and it has become the reason why VR/AR device shipments have been difficult to increase.

However, driven by the meta-universe issue, apart from attracting more hardware brand manufacturers to enter the VR/AR market in 2022, it will also prompt application service providers to promote the development of the hardware market directly or indirectly. From the perspective of the consumer market, relevant companies may adopt the strategy of software subsidies for hardware as a means to accelerate the expansion of the user base and increase market penetration through VR/AR products with low unit prices and high specifications. Oculus uses this product strategy to maintain its market advantage and estimates that the market share of its Oculus Quest series products may increase to 66% next year.

From the perspective of the commercial market, due to the development of application services such as remote communication, multi-person cooperation and digital twins, it also increases the willingness of enterprises to adopt VR/AR devices. Compared with the consumer market with low price and high regulation as the orientation, enterprises in the commercial market are more willing to choose high-price and high-performance products, but at the same time they should be equipped with complete system integration solutions or customized services. Therefore, Microsoft, which has considerable strength in the industrial ecological chain, will have a greater competitive advantage, making its product HoloLens 2 one of the few commercial AR devices with more than 200000 shipments this year.

In addition, with the help of the rapid development of 5G Netcom, affordable AR glasses and matching 5G mobile phone computing and network functions for remote video services will become another choice for commercial applications. TrendForce Jibang Consulting believes that this scheme can provide enterprises with a low-cost, easy-to-deploy early attempt, help to increase the willingness of enterprises to adopt more VR/AR commercial applications, and then accelerate the development of commercial metacosmos functional services.