Industrial XR will drive ROI in immersive market, says Lenovo – XR Today

Companies in the virtual, augmented, mixed and extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) industry have begun to focus on the future of industrial XR. Many hardware manufacturers are removing barriers to successful XR experiences with innovative headsets and solutions aimed at the enterprise market.

Organizations have launched numerous platforms to facilitate dialogue about the future of space communications, especially as companies hope to reach their highest potential with immersive technology.

The ongoing Immerse Global Summit (IGS) 2022 is taking place December 5-7 in Miami, Florida. Dozens of companies, thought leaders and experts from the global technology industry attended the meeting to share insights into the future of Web3 technologies.

At the event, XR Today spoke with Jason McGuigan, Head of Commercial Virtual Realityon his company’s latest product line, his take on the Summit, and his thoughts on the industrial metaverse.

XR Today: What are your thoughts on IGS 2022 Miami, and what have you learned and accomplished so far?

Jason McGuigan: There was a lot of energy in the crowd during the keynote. We’re seeing a lot of upheaval in the industry right now, but despite that, everyone at the event is still bustling with awesome energy and enthusiasm.

Regarding the enterprise metaverse, I gave an interactive conversation where people could choose their direction and what they wanted to hear from the customer’s perspective.

We want to show how to bring XR technologies to the enterprise, and we’re currently at the place where we need to prove it to people outside the industry. We also need to prove the return on investment (ROI) because we can’t get people to invest in what’s possible for tomorrow if we don’t show them the ROI today.

I discussed in my morning talk how to prove ROI and get to the next level of the metaverse, as well as some topics on futurism, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and others. We also mentioned our new ThinkReality VRX headset, which will be released early next year.

XR Today: Can you provide any updates on the ThinkReality VRX and what you hope it will accomplish?

Jason McGuigan: Currently we are walking in a very mature landscape and not generating anything from scratch. While organizations are still discovering use cases for augmented reality, virtual reality still has a lot of proven ROI.

Numerous business use cases have demonstrated its effectiveness and how it could save businesses significant amounts of money. From this perspective, organizations think it makes a lot of sense to invest in. They will see this return in a very short period of time while saving money and lives, and protecting an organization’s legacy.

This is achieved by improving the skills of employees with better skills, making them less disadvantageous and avoiding the possibility of having accidents or injuries at work.

We’re focusing our attention on those things and that’s our big push for the next few months: working with the major independent software vendors (ISVs) in VR. This ensures that those who bring their software to our headsets are ready to go from day one.

We have great partners at Qualcomm helping us in this battle, and we’re excited to bring it to market soon as well. As far as AR goes, the A3 is a fantastic product. We are constantly updating the device through the Snapdragon Spaces SDK, so it always has new and improved features.

It is a device that even a few months ago had already evolved considerably in just a few months, and we will see this constant evolution of this technology. This is because the software constantly receives updates and improves to greatly improve the functionality.

XR Today: What do you think industrial XR will look like in the near future, and will the company be behind the creation of the metaverse?

Jason McGuigan: I think the company will open the doors to the industrial metaverse. I’ve always talked about the company leading the way because they have the most money to spend. Also, many people manage many devices for multiple use cases.

It also enhances the consumer space with a trickle-down approach as the business space expands and grows the market. These technologies will eventually transition from enterprise to consumer, but I think the consumer market may temporarily hit a wall as more people adopt XR.

Many people realize that when they first try the device at work, they end up buying a consumer device. Using these tools at work becomes the first encounter with XR for many people, giving them a taste of the technology that leads to its adoption in their personal lives.

XR Today: What are your final thoughts on the conference and what do you expect from it in the near future?

There are so many conferences for technology that are generalized for technology. The IGS 2022 is one of the few specifically focused on immersive content. Where I see the difference between this and your Augmented Enterprise Summit (AES), Consumer Electronics Show (CES) or Augmented World Expo (AWE), there is an excitement with this group like never before.

While it doesn’t take itself too seriously, there’s a lot of business going on, people are building great relationships and it’s happening in some amazing destinations. The previous one was in Madeira and this one takes place in Miami, allowing people to go to places they want to visit and discover beautiful places with the people they love to spend time with.

It helps inject creativity and liveliness into conversations that I don’t think you get at some of the other big conferences. I look forward to seeing continued success, and as we meet a lot of the same people here, it turns into a really strong community that builds on itself.