According to IDC's latest Worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide, global spending on augmented reality and virtual reality is forecasted to reach $18.8 billion (£14.5 bn) in 2020.

This figure is an increase of 78.5%, compared to the £8.12bn which IDC expects to be spent in 2019.

The report also shows that global spending on AR/VR products and services...

Opinion ‘Digital convergence’ was the major buzz phrase during the nascent days of what we’ll call ‘mobile content’. In the early-2000s, you couldn’t open a trade magazine (remember those?), visit a tech website or attend a conference without being bombarded with the word and what it would mean for myriad industries specialising in creating content, its means of distribution or the devices for consumption.

Health Education England had piloted a virtual reality (VR) system across various NHS sites, in partnership with Oxford Medical Simulation, to help doctors train for medical emergencies among people with type-1 diabetes.

As reported by Diabetes.co.uk, the National...

Finnish tech startup Varjo has announced a $31 million Series B investment to introduce the world’s first human-eye resolution virtual reality and mixed reality (VR/XR) product, which is aimed at industrial use.

The product holds the potential to transform complex and design-driven industries, such as architecture, engineering and construction, simulation and training, engineering and construction, aerospace, and industrial design.

The Helsinki-based firm now has a total of $46 million in accumulated...

Meet VERSES. The Los Angeles-based startup aims to ‘create a new economy for tradeable and transportable digitised assets that combines the virtual with the physical.’

VERSES has showcased its virtual and augmented reality protocol to power ownership, monetization, geolocation and tradability of digital goods, holographic avatars and connected experiences. VERSES creates a new economy for tradable and transportable...

New research from CCS Insight estimates that the global market for VR and AR headsets will hit $1.8 billion in 2018. The company is predicting that a massive 50% growth in the device market over the next four years until it hits $9.9 billion in 2022.

At this stage, a total of 121 million units will have been sold. This growth has been mostly driven by VR headsets and a new crop of standalone devices like the Occulus Go and HTC Vive Focus are likely to continue this trend. The coming five decades will see...

Ericsson, the multinational networking and telecommunications service company, is predicting that VR will go mainstream in just two years’ time.

The company’s eighth annual ConsumerLab TV and Media Report took data from around 20,000 online interviews from across 13 countries. The results show that in the mind of most consumers it is video-on-demand (VOD) that is going to fuel the rise of VR.

The report estimates that by 2020, half of all viewing will be done on a mobile screen and a third of...

VR skills are becoming an increasingly desirable as more and more companies begin to invest heavily in the technology, according to freelancing website Upwork.

As the money, attention and ideas begin to flow into the VR space, there are still relatively few workers who specialise in the skills needed to produce content and hardware.

The company’s quarterly Upwork Skills Index ranks the 20 fastest growing skills amongst freelancers in the US job market. Tech-related skills make up 65% of...

US stock photo agency Getty Images has entered into an exclusive global distribution partnership with virtual reality (VR) company Jaunt that has the largest library of high-quality cinematic VR content in the industry.

Through this partnership, Getty Images users will be able to access Jaunt’s immersive 360° stereo video experiences through its website along with Getty Images’ collection of over 25,000 360 photographs. It will also enable leading content creators to deliver the one-of-a-kind...

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located IoT Tech Expo,

(c)Takram

The untapped potential of virtual reality is increasingly being explored, and it’s smaller firms that appear to be doing much of the probing.

Japanese creative company Takram, which is launching its first ever UK studio in London, is exploring how virtual reality can be used to unravel the complexities of big data.

Their big data project will be unveiled at the London Design Fair this week, as part of their Scenes Unseen exhibition, which will take visitors behind the scenes of...

(c)iStock.com/GregorBister

Younger generations are always well known for adopting the latest and greatest tech, and virtual reality is no exception.

A recent study has shown that 8% of 18 - 35 year olds are planning to buy a virtual reality headset by the end of the year - not a massive figure it may seem, but this comes to about 1.5 million in the US.

This is at least according to...

(c)Facebook

Facebook has launched new publisher tools for 360 video on its platform, including guides and heatmaps.

The social media platform launched 360 video capabilities onto the Facebook site last September, and since then 250,000 videos have been uploaded - and the number is increasing.

Its new guide feature will allow 360 video creators to give viewers a ‘guided tour’ of a 360 video as it plays, setting a narrative by highlighting and...

(c)iStock.com/baranozdemir

What was once viewed as the stuff of science fiction, virtual reality (VR) has seen its impact flourish in the enterprise landscape. Continuous developments and the practical business potentials have pushed VR deeper across a range of industries, including healthcare and automotive. While VR technology ultimately requires constant refinement to match consumer demands, not to mention a network of supporting technologies, data centre operators have begun tapping into the potential...

(c)iStock.com/xijan

Augmented reality is ahead of virtual reality in terms of global market growth - and is set to continue all the way to 2020, according to a new report. 

Research and Markets published research this week looking into the two markets. It found AR was valued at $2.35bn last year, and estimates it'll reach $117bn by 2022. 

In contrast, the VR market's an estimated $1.37bn and may reach £33bn six years. AR's growth rate is set to be higher due to "interest shown...

(c)Littlstar 

Marketers may well be familiar with the use of heatmaps and social analytics tools on regular websites, but for the first time, virtual reality (VR) video now has its own solution.

Disney Accelerator-backed startup Littlstar has just launched a creator’s dashboard, which gives access to user analytics, demographics and heat maps for all viewers on videos distributed via its network. 

Founded in...