Dubai: There is huge potential for the augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) industry in the Middle East and Africa but currently, the industry is very consumer-driven and that’s the main challenge, an industry analyst told Gulf News.

“Most people just associate AR/VR with gaming — as that is the ‘use case’ we have seen the most in the UAE so far,” said Nabila Popal, senior research manager at IDC.

AR uses devices like your smartphone to view the real world with virtual objects. The Pokemon Go game launched last year was an popular AR app.

Virtual Reality technology uses a headset to create a completely simulated view.

Shipments of AR and VR headsets are expected to reach 13.7 million units in 2017 globally, growing to 81.2 million units by 2021 with a compound annual growth rate of 56.1 per cent.

Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst at IDC, said that AR headsets are also on track to account for over $30 billion (Dh110.2 billion) in revenue by 2021, almost twice that of VR, as most of the AR headsets will carry much higher average selling prices with earlier adopters being the commercial segment.

Meanwhile, he said that most consumers will experience AR on mobile devices, although it’s only a matter of time before Apple’s ARKit- and Google’s ARCore-enabled apps make their way into consumer-grade headsets.

Apple doesn’t have a hardware ‘headset’ for AR yet. It entered the AR space this October with the iOS 11.

VR headsets will account for more than 90 per cent of the market until 2019 while AR will account for the rest. In the final two years of the forecast, IDC expects AR headsets to experience exponential growth as they capture a quarter of the market by the end of the forecast.

From the Middle East and Africa region, Popal said that 160,000 units were sold in the first quarter of this year with a year-on-year growth rate of 23 per cent, 7 per cent of the total global shipments. The technology is expected to register 63 per cent year-on-year growth by end of this year and 84 per cent by end of the first quarter next year.

“There is a huge potential for it in the commercial space, and that is where the real boom in this technology will come from, as use cases across different industries will grow, the adoption rate for it will grow and will drive the shipments,” she said.

While AR headsets are poised for long-term growth along with a profound impact on the way businesses and consumers compute, she said that VR headsets will drive a near-term shift in computing.

“The market is still small numbers-wise, but it is exciting as whatever happens Dubai always wants to be at the forefront of all innovative technologies,” she said.

Hardware isn’t the issue, she said, with plenty of headset options already in the market and even more coming soon.

The bigger challenge is the slow growth in content that appeals to a mass audience and cross-platform support for existing content.

“With the introduction of Apple’s ARKit, they have created something that will help this, by creating a tool/platform for developers to create AR apps/content for iOS, which is very exciting for the developer world,” she said.