NEW DELHI: The IT spending on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) is set to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.7% and reach $28.8 billion by 2024, according to a new report.

Commercial segment surpassed consumer AR/VR spending last year and will continue to account for a larger share of the spending, said IDC Worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide.

This growth is primarily driven by the AR/VR technology capabilities addressing the issues of different industries in current Covid-19 scenario and creating immense opportunities throughout the forecast.

"The restrictions imposed due to the pandemic urged many organisations to rely on technologies to support their business processes/functions such as customer service, remote health, and minimised in-person meetings among others.

"With this, there was strong new demand across many industries for AR/VR technology in the market especially in the second half of 2020," said Ritika Srivastava, Associate Market Analyst at IDC Asia/Pacific.

Education, with online virtual teaching turning out to be a more engaging experience for students. It is then closely followed by retail, and discrete manufacturing the three industries encompass close to 50 % of the overall commercial sector in 2020.

Virtual reality games are a leading use case in 2020, with more than one-third of the overall AR/VR technology market being one of the top entertainment sources in 2020 owing to the limitations of physical interaction due to pandemic.

This is followed by training, and video/feature viewing (VR) use cases.

"However, emergency response and internal videography are the fastest-growing use cases in terms of compound annual growth rate over the forecast (2019-2024)," the IDC said.

The rest is here:

Augmented reality and virtual reality spending to reach $28.8 billion in Asia-Pacific in 2024: IDC - Gadgets Now