philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Venture Reality Fund has released its H2 2017 VR Industry Landscape map and report. The organization has generously posted the map, along with maps of the 1H 2017 European Landscape and Q2 2017 AR Industry Landscape. The VR Fund’s latest report highlights more than 450 companies developing infrastructure, tools, platforms, and applications for the VR/AR ecosystem. An interactive table, which VR Fund co-founder Tipatat Chennavasin began building in 2014, provides details of the companies. 

The VR Fund evaluated more than 3,000 companies and identified the 450 that met a certain criteria of funding, revenue, mainstream coverage, and/or major partnerships that qualified them for inclusion in the map, interactive table, and report.

“Global investment in VR and AR is tracking higher than any previous period, and at a more accelerated pace,” said Chennavasin “The VR industry is healthy and growing steadily, and we are seeing increased investor interest from traditional venture funds and new VR and AR-focused funds alike.”

As would be expected, the report notes that Hollywood and game players are driving growth in the consumer VR market. On the enterprise VR side, while global companies like Cisco, HP and Accenture entered space during this period, a majority of the category’s growth was driven by startups building revenue-generating businesses for specific industry sectors.

“The number of investments in VR/AR entertainment was up 79 percent in the second half of 2017 (granted, it’s not quite over yet) compared to the second half of 2016,” reports VentureBeat. “Enterprise investments are up 69 percent. Tools and platforms for next-generation reality capture are up 56 percent, and investments in infrastructure for tethered head-mounted displays are up 47 percent.”

The VR Fund also noticed a recent shift in investments away from 360-degree video and to more interactive and immersive experiences, which bodes well for the industry in 2018.