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I've been thinking about the role that VR will play post pandemic as a communications platform in relation to the following doubts that I have heard expressed.
1. It's no substitute for real life meetings/events and everyone will go back to that post pandemic,
2. People are not going to spend lots of time with a VR device stuck on their head.
3. It's a fad - people might try it once and then not bother with it as it's too much hassle.
My feeling is the above arguments are based on a false choice between VR and reality/video meetings etc. Of course people will go back to having real life events, meetings and education. However I think of VR as being like a new mode of transport - it's a new way of doing all these things that will work better than real life in certain situations, without replacing face-to-face interactions. The pandemic is obviously one such, but there are plenty of other situations e.g. globally distributed teams, homeworking teams, emergency training, virtual classrooms and countless other situations where VR is inherently better than the alternative, not to mention cheaper.
Also the low cost also means the market for events and meetings can be expanded to cover areas where at the moment it would be too expensive to arrange a meeting/event. The real cost of an event attendance is way more than the ticket price - think of the flight, hotel, entertainment, food, taxi etc costs. Companies will have realised how much they have saved by not doing live events, and many will have drastically reduced budgets for these over the next couple of years. Finally it adds a new dimension to employee interactions that is just plain fun and in the war for talent having this be part of the workplace could be a real advantage. Of course VR won't replace reality - otherwise VRE would be heading for a multi-trillion pound market cap (we can hope), but we don't don't need it to to build a seriously profitable company. I think of the pandemic as an accelerator for a pre-existing trend, allowing far more companies to experience this and work out how to take advantage of this in the future than would otherwise be the case. Unlike Zoom, who have probably maxed out their growth during COVID, VRE is just getting started.
I also think VRE have been smart to recognise they are a small company still and leverage their platform and skills through larger players. At this stage that is the fastest way to market, and it adds credibility to the offering that leading players in the space want to partner with and sell Engage. I would expect to see more partners signed up in the near future.
Finally, by sheer luck the pandemic has coincided with the launch of a new generation of headsets that are lighter, cheaper and tether free, helping to overcome many of the issues many had with the technology. This trend will only accelerate with the release of 5G devices.
Bensug - a good analysis of this company's market and prospects. I am an adult educator (until the pandemic, I ran interactive leadership training courses internationally), and I'm coming to terms with the likelihood that companies have lost their appetite for flying highly-paid managers and executives around the world to sit in confined conference rooms (however interactive & participative the learning methods are). Many training consultancies are experimenting with the new technologies and platforms to try to make learning online as close to a f2f experience as possible - e.g. using MS Teams, Zoom, Miro, Mural, Mentimeter, Slido, etc, etc. However, none of these quite cut the mustard for sessions of any more than about 2 hrs max. I think VR and AR technology will be the next level. VR is now just starting to catch on (after a slow start) as the tech gets cheaper and less clunky. I think this company is on to something, and I expect good things.