Furthermore, considering factors such as pricing and the absence of certain essential features, TrendForce anticipates a modest shipment volume of approximately 200,000 units for Apple Vision Pro in 2024.
TrendForce forecasts a global downturn in AR and VR device shipments for 2023, predicting a shipment total of roughly 7.45 million units—an 18.2% YoY decrease.
TrendForce forecasts that the value of the global 5G market will reach US$14.5 billion in 2023 thanks to the promotion of 5G private networks by enterprises and the upgrading of the equipment purposed for small cells and 5G FWA. Then, the global 5G market will further scale up to US$37 billion in 2026, with the CAGR for the 2023~2026 period coming to 11.0%. Applications related to the Metaverse will help spur the demand for 5G networks during the period.
According to TrendForce research, smartphone camera module shipments will increase to 5.02 billion units in 2022, an annual growth rate of 5%. Since the price-performance ratio of whole devices is the primary basis for consumer purchases, the cost of high-standard solutions such as the five-camera design and main cameras sporting hundreds of millions of pixels will inevitably be passed on to the manufacturer with little improvement in sales performance. Therefore, the three-camera module remains the mainstream design this year and is forecast to account for more than 40% of total shipments. Only some smartphone models will adopt a four-camera design to differentiate their specifications, while the number of products with dual-cameras or less will fall, with entry-level models being the primary candidates.
AR/VR device shipments revised up to 14.19 million units in 2022, with an annual growth rate of 43.9%, according to TrendForce research. Growth momentum will come from increased demand for remote interactivity stemming from the pandemic, as well as Oculus Quest 2’s price reduction strategy. Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Oculus Quest 2 are first in market share for AR and VR, respectively.
Factors such as the rising popularity of topics related to the metaverse and UGC (user-generated content), as well as the rapid increase in AR/VR device shipment, will likely result in the creation of a growing body of virtual reality content in the market, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. TrendForce expects annual global virtual reality content revenue to grow at a 40% CAGR from US$2.16 billion in 2021 to US$8.31 billion in 2025.
The growth of the metaverse will drive an increasing number of companies to participate in the build-out of the virtual world, with use cases such as social communities, gaming/entertainment, content creation, virtual economy, and industrial applications all becoming important points of focus in the coming years, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. Apart from increases in both computing power of semiconductors and coverage of low-latency, high-speed networks, the metavere’s development will also depend on the adoption of AR/VR devices by end users. TrendForce expects global AR/VR device shipment for 2022 to reach 12.02 million units, a 26.4% YoY increase, with Oculus and Microsoft each taking leadership position in the consumer and commercial markets, respectively.
Total shipment of AR/VR devices is expected to reach 5.12 million units in 2020, according to TrendForce. Thanks to the release of various glasses-like AR/VR devices, the AR/VR devices market is likely to rapidly expand from 2021 to 2022, with a forecasted shipment of 43.2 million units in 2025. This market is projected to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.1% from 2020 to 2025.
The global shipments of smartwatches in 2019 are estimated to total around 62.63 million units, according to the latest tracking analysis from the research firm TrendForce. Looking ahead to 2020, smartwatch sales will benefit from the lower prices of the earlier versions of the Apple Watch devices and the releases of new smartwatch models from other branded device manufacturers. TrendForce forecasts that the global smartphone shipments in 2020 will grow by 28.6% YoY to around 80.55 million units. The total shipments of the Apple Watch devices for the same year are also forecasted to grow by 21.8% YoY to around 34 million units.