As this episode goes live, Alan's
away giving a talk at the XR
Intelligence conference in San Francisco. A little while back, he
sat down with Event Director Kathryn Bloxham, to get a sense of who
will be there, what there is to see, and where the XR market is as
2019 comes to a close.
Alan: Hey everyone, it's Alan
here, with the XR for Business Podcast. Today, we're speaking with
Kathryn Bloxham from Reuters Events brand, XR Intelligence, about
their amazing business conference, VRX happening in San Francisco,
December 12th and 13th. I will be speaking at that conference on the
transformation of learning with XR. We will also be discussing the
findings of their 2019 XR industry report. All that and more, on the
XR for Business Podcast.
Welcome to the show, Kathryn. How are
you today?
Kathryn: Hi, I'm great, thanks.
How are you doing?
Alan: I'm so amazing. I'm really
excited for a number of things. One, your industry report is the
quintessential report on what the industry is actually looking
forward to in 2020 and beyond. I'm going to be speaking at your VRX
conference -- we'll talk about that, and all the great things -- and
you also host a number of really informational webinars. So we'll get
into that. But let's talk about you and how did you end up being in
where you are right now?
Kathryn: Yeah, so I work for XR
Intelligence, which was actually recently acquired by Thomson Reuters
under the new Reuters Events brand, which is very exciting. We speak
to people throughout the entire year about the trends, challenges,
solutions, and opportunities that they see in virtual, augmented, and
mixed reality. So primarily our audience are end users of the
technology. So it started mostly as people in gaming a few years ago
and the entertainment side, and gradually is actually getting more
and more focused on enterprise customers. And then we also put
together various types of content throughout the year. So we do the
webinars, industry surveys and reports, as well as three events
throughout the year across the US and Europe. And that really allows
our contacts to keep their eye on the progress of the industry and
make informed business decisions about investing in immersive
technologies.
Alan: Seems to be the perfect
jam for the XR for Business Podcast, as our mission here is to
inspire and educate business leaders to invest in XR technologies. So
having said that, what are some of the findings of this industry
report you guys did?
Kathryn: Yes. So it was really
interesting. We've done it for the past few years. and this year we
managed to get around 750 people take part. And there was some really
interesting patterns that emerged when we looked at the 2019 survey
compared with the 2018 survey. So this year, for example, the
hardware, software and third party content creators to XR have seen
much stronger growth in the enterprise side of that business,
compared to growth in the consumer sector over the past 12 months. So
I guess that's kind of in line with people moving towards the money
as people are seeing a lot more money in the enterprise side. And
that's kind of reflected in the fact that consumer adoption hasn't
been as much as people would have expected it to be at this stage. So
growth is accelerating for enterprise applications, particularly
maybe surprisingly in VR. So in 2018, 38 percent said that they were
seeing strong or very strong growth in VR for enterprise and this
rose to 46 percent in this year's survey. So it kind of reflects the
demand trends with enterprise end users seeing strong ROI. And then
93 percent of the enterprise users said that VR had had a positive
impact on their business and 88 percent said the same for AR and MR.
Alan: So 93 percent s