Adopted by the gaming and entertainment sectors, AR-VR headsets once flooded shopping malls and public places in India, and oval-shaped VR stations required children to wear head-mounted devices (HMDs) to experience various immersive worlds, such as car racing or horror. in the jungle.

However, initial interest quickly faded, and the last two years of the pandemic saw most of these VR outlets close.

In the same period, smartphone adoption has skyrocketed and India alone now has over 500 million users.

Despite only appearing on the scene some six or seven years ago, the impact of AR-VR on a mass level remains to be seen, both on the consumer and enterprise fronts, though things have slowly started to improve.

Amid the turmoil of the metaverse, the global AR/VR headset market grew a whopping 92.1% (year over year) in 2021 with shipments reaching 11.2 million units, according to IDC.

However, “AR headsets continue to represent a small fraction of the overall AR/VR headset market and the volumes we see are occurring almost exclusively on the commercial side of the business,” said Tom Mainelli, group vice president, Device & Consumer Research. at IDC.

The Metaverse is certainly driving hype and investment in AR and VR, and a number of adjacent technologies, “but we don’t expect this frothy behavior to affect headset volumes anytime soon.”

Meanwhile, several reports emerged of users experiencing mental fatigue, headaches/eye strain, nausea, and other health issues while using a VR headset.

Metaverse is now touted as a next-level deep dive into the world of immersive experiences, into “hybrid normalcy” that will result in your virtual avatars traversing various environments, such as office meetings, sunbathing on the beach, or shopping in a mall. , imitating real life.

According to JP Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, despite worldwide hype, the metaverse, which is the Internet’s layer of 3D experience, isn’t here yet.

“The hype of the metaverse has outpaced the interest of ordinary people in the short term. Building the metaverse will take many years. The metaverse doesn’t even exist yet due to lack of interoperability and portability of experiences,” Gownder told IANS.

For the metaverse to become a reality, it must support an immersive experience of interoperable and interconnected environments delivered through a variety of devices, from smartphones and VR headsets to other form factors not yet conceived.

“The enterprise segment will adopt some early metaverse technologies before the mass consumer market,” Gownder said.

Late last month, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel criticized the metaverse, saying the concept is “pretty ambiguous and hypothetical,” taking an obvious dig at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has made big plans around the metaverse. metaverse spending billions of dollars.

Meta will even open its first retail store in the US on April 9 that will sell its Quest 2 AR-VR headsets, Quest 2 accessories, and Portal smart video devices.

A Gartner report in February said that more than a third of consumers (35 percent) have never heard of the metaverse.

Nearly 58 percent of those surveyed had heard of the metaverse but didn’t know what it means.

Only 6 percent of people identified as comfortable enough with their understanding of the metaverse to explain it to others. Nearly 21 percent said they are concerned about the impacts the metaverse could have.

“Contemplating the metaverse is a luxury most people don’t have time for these days,” said Kyle Rees, senior director and analyst at Gartner.

According to Prativa Mohapatra, VP and GM of Adobe India, at this point it is unclear how many experiences in the metaverse people will ultimately accept as it is just a buzzword.

“In the metaverse, we’re now doing more interactions, meetings, site visits, and sightseeing, etc. How much of this people will want to accept remains a question. However, for a distributed, hybrid workforce in the pandemic, collaborating in scenarios metaverse-style will only grow in importance,” Mohapatra told IANS.

Gownder said that full consumer experiences will take longer to mature to the point where a mass market of people want to participate in them.

“Today, it’s mainly gamers and very young consumers who spend a lot of time in virtual worlds,” he said.

Single-vendor platform enablements like augmented or virtual worlds, game environments, and development tools are just precursors to the metaverse.

“The metaverse also requires regulatory standards, privacy codes of conduct, and inclusive and compelling user experience (UX) design,” Gownder emphasized.