Beijing-based Nreal (太若科技), Chinese AR glasses startup, has produced 100,000th pair of its AR glasses; It held a ceremony on December 30 to officially mark this occassion, saying it has become the first AR brand in the world to reach this milestone, reported Pandaily.
Xu Chi, the founder and CEO of Nreal, predicted that by 2030, there will be one billion AR glasses worn globally. Available data shows that Nreal shipped more than 70,000 pairs of glasses in the fourth quarter. Nreal was founded in 2017, developing mixed-reality wearables, providing immersive experiences with its innovative technology.
Nreal Air is the main product promoted by the firm in the global market currently. It is equipped with a Sony Micro OLED screen, has an industry benchmark spatial retina display with a 130-inch aerial projection screen and a 201-inch AR sharp color canopy. One of the main features is that it supports connections with various devices such as mobile phones, tablets, notebooks, game consoles and even smart cars, said the Pandaily report.
In order to provide more content and the most friendly interactive experience, Nreal launched a spatial interactive system, and has cooperated with many enterprises such as iQIYI (爱奇艺), NIO (蔚来) and Kuaishou (快手) to exclusively customize several AR content platforms to create a richer AR ecology for users.
At the new product launch conference on August 23, Nreal launched two AR glasses, the Nreal Air and Nreal X, in China. With strong promotion, Nreal’s first-day sales exceeded RMB12 million ($1.72 million). Soon after, Nreal announced a strategic investment of up to $15 million, the Pandaily report noted.
Nreal first explored the vast overseas market, then entered China. According to a report by Strategy Analytics, from 2020 to 2021, Nreal ranked first in consumer AR shipments, accounting for an 80% market share.
Meanwhile, about 296,000 AR head-mounted display devices were shipped in the first half of 2022, 75% of which were shipped to overseas markets. VR has a larger market share in China, with 6.84 million VR head-mounted display devices shipped in the first half of 2022, according to a report released by VR Tuoluo.
In China, the VR and AR industries have strong policy support. At the beginning of November, five governmental departments jointly issued a five-year action plan for the integration of VR (including AR and MR) and industrial applications.
It is mentioned in the plan that the overall scale of the VR industry is expected to exceed RMB350 billion ($50.48 billion) in 2026, becoming an important part of the information industry. It is also forecasted that the sales volume of VR terminals in China will exceed 25 million units by then, and a dynamic ecological community and public service platform will be created, said the Pandaily report. (HX Chen)
