Does VR have a future?

13

October

2019

4/5 (1)

When in March 2014 Facebook bought the Kickstarter Oculus Rift, I believed that we were on the verge of a huge development. Facebook by then had done an amazing job in their acquisitions, with of course Instagram for 1 billion, which is estimated to be approximately worth 100 billion nowadays and Whatsapp, which was famously bought for 19 billion in February 2014.

However, after nearly six years the hype of the Ocolus rift has slowly died out, and something which was thought (also by me) to be a gamechanger for technology actually never seemed to deliver what was expected of it. Of course, VR has been used in many ways over the last few years, from VR fishing and Mario kart to actual employee training across a fortune 500 company. Still, one cannot really shake away the disappointment when thinking about the current state of the VR market, which hasn’t been able to move away from a niche market.

Apart from the numerous issues that haunt VR devices, which include cybersickness, Eyestrain, and the incredible high computing power needed to run the VR device a number of other technologies have gathered traction that could overtake VR. The two most known technologies are Augmented reality (AR), which combines the reality that we see with virtual elements and mixed reality (MR) a combination of the two technologies, which feels like the best of the two worlds.

Unfortunately for VR this is also what the market is expecting. Gartner, the company known for its famous yearly hype cycle predicted in 2018 that MR will overtake both VR and AR. As a fan of virtual reality, I sincerely hope this will not be the case, but it’s not looking good for VR, and one has to start thinking if VR might be just a trend, just as we saw with 3D tv’s between 2010 and 2018. A product that had to the possibility to become a game changer but could end up becoming nothing more than a niche.

References:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-25/value-of-facebook-s-instagram-estimated-to-top-100-billion

Walmart Expands VR Employee Training To All U.S. Locations

Gartner hype cycle 2018: Mixed reality to overtake VR and AR


https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/3-reasons-why-vr-and-ar-are-slow-to-take-off/

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The return of the Industry: Is the end of Netflix coming up?

28

September

2019

5/5 (1)

The story of how Netflix came up, and the big, evil Blockbuster is a tale many of us have heard. Blockbuster was known as the worldwide leader of video rental stores (Associated Press 1992) with 60.000 employees, 9000 stores and market value of 5 billion dollars at the heights of it reign(Harress 2013).

However, a large group of users actually didn’t really like using the services of Blockbuster. The company was famous for its aggressive late fee policy, which accounted to 16% of its total revenue back in 2000, but also the accounted for the majority of annoyance of its userbase. (Liedtke,Anderson 2010)

However, unfortunately for them it also sparked the anger of Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, who was done with paying late fees and introduced the Netflix dvd-by-mail system.
This became a large problem for Blockbuster, and even more so when Netflix became a frontrunner on the new streaming market, which eventually lead to the end of blockbuster within a decade.

Netflix established itself the main streaming platform across the world, and as a result had an immense growth. They grew from 46.13 million subscribers in Q1 2014 to 148.86 million in Q1 2019(Statista 2019).and the shares rose 8.300 percent since 2009
No, you weren’t reading that wrong. That is an increase of eight-thousand-tree-hundred percent.

What could possible spoil the party for Netflix? Well the answer is one tiny mouse.

The mouse that represent the media empire the Walt Disney company.

For years Netflix has been the leader in the streaming industry. They have done this by a great combination of offering fan-favorite shows such as Friends, The Office, and many others(McBride 2019) and offering quality self-made content, such as House of cards, Stranger things, and Black mirror. Which was a smart move, as this self-made content was a way of creating loyal customers over the last decade and this is the field were Netflix will face heavy competition over the next year. Because if we look at content as value then Disney is king.

Starting this week Disney has released a Disney+ trial period before its official release on November 12th, and its content is subjectively of incredible quality. With all content from Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar franchises already available. In addition, Disney+ will start offering its own content starting from November 12th, and most importantly all this content will be available only on Disney+ meaning that all Disney owned content will be removed from Netflix.

Furthermore, Netflix will receive even more competition with Apple releasing its own streaming platform called Apple TV+, Warner media coming with HBO Max in 2020, and NBC Universal streaming coming in 2021.

The most important feature of the upcoming streaming platforms is not only that they will increase the competition, but at the same time Netflix will lose a large portion of its content, and this hasn’t happened so far.

There are multiple ways this could affect the streaming industry, but I personally believe that the content of Disney is favorable for the majority of people, and people will not be positive towards paying for multiple streaming platforms, and in result there will be a shift from leader and Netflix will slowly lose its position to Disney, but remain a close second to Disney. In addition, the other players will take a slice of the market, but they will remain niche players.

Please share what you think will happen next!

Sources:

Associated Press. 1992. “VIDEO INDUSTRY HOPES LATEST HITS WILL HELP SUMMER RENTALS REBOUND – Deseret News.” https://www.deseret.com/1992/5/26/18986204/video-industry-hopes-latest-hits-will-help-summer-rentals-rebound-br (September 28, 2019).

Harress, Christopher. 2013. “The Sad End Of Blockbuster Video: The Onetime $5 Billion Company Is Being Liquidated As Competition From Online Giants Netflix And Hulu Prove All Too Much For The Iconic Brand.” https://www.ibtimes.com/sad-end-blockbuster-video-onetime-5-billion-company-being-liquidated-competition-1496962 (September 28, 2019).
Liedtke, Michael, Anderson, Michael. 2010. “Blockbuster Tries to Rewrite Script in Bankruptcy – Boston.Com.” http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2010/09/23/blockbuster_tries_to_rewrite_script_in_bankruptcy/ (September 28, 2019).

McBride, Stephen. 2019. “Netflix Has 175 Days Left To Pull Off A Miracle… Or It’s All Over.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/05/21/netflix-has-175-days-left-to-pull-off-a-miracle-or-its-all-over/#3e5d7b6475c4 (September 28, 2019).

Statista. 2019. “• Number of Netflix Subscribers 2019 | Statista.” https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/ (September 28, 2019).

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