Can the commercialisation of VR provide the jump-start that the haptics industry has been waiting for?

Can the commercialisation of VR provide the jump-start that the
haptics industry has been waiting for?
IDTechEx

Cambridge, UK 

Can the commercialisation
of VR provide the jump-start that
the haptics industry has been waiting for?

By
James Hayward, Senior Technology Analyst, IDTechEx

Haptics
are key technologies found as an essential feature enhancing the user
experience in many very familiar products today. Whether as notification
provision in a vibrating smartphone, tension building in a video game
controller, or input confirmation in an industrial scanner, haptics
technologies have now reached billions of electronics devices. The new report from IDTechEx Research, Haptics2017-2027: Technologies, Markets and Players, finds that the haptics industry will
be worth $2.8bn by 2027.

In
the recent past, the haptics industry had been short of prominent success
stories. After the huge success that saw haptic actuators adopted ubiquitously
in products like smartphones, the industry then suffered increasing
commoditisation, high levels of competition and shrinking margins. The
eccentric rotating mass (ERM) motor dominated for many years, and it is only recently
that linear resonant actuators (LRAs) have taken significant amounts of market
share, enabling some fresh growth. Even this change has not significantly
shifted the haptics hardware landscape, as similar players tend to control
market share around both types of actuator.

The
entry barriers for players with new haptics technologies were critically high;
the cheap, reliable and effective incumbents in the smartphone market have been
infallible. Whilst companies large and small were able to differentiate using
new technologies to provide new sensations, form factors or ideas, few came
close to upsetting the status quo.

Haptic technology adoption. Image
source: IDTechEx

As
such, these players increasingly looked away from replacing the incumbents in
existing market, and instead towards the generation of brand new markets for
their new haptic actuators. In the automotive space, many players have advanced
significantly along the long journey towards commercial validation and
adoption, but progress has been slow. The boom in interest around wearable
technology brought new players and new interest. For example, smartwatches
could have new haptics in the body of the device or even in the watch strap, apparel products should need actuators
that are flexible with the textile rather than bulky motors, and so on. Again,
this drove some more interest, but progress has been slower than many would’ve
liked.

But
after years of false starts, the virtual reality space is now offering the best
opportunity for new haptics that we have seen over a decade. Whilst VR itself
is nothing new, widespread commercially available platforms have only hit the
market in the last 12-18 months. This has been fuelled by billions of dollars of investment, with
thousands of players involved including all the largest technology players in
the world. Not only this, but all of the largest players in VR (Oculus, HTC and
Sony today) have explicitly defined the existing haptics as a key opportunity
for technology development in the future.

The
ripples of this have been felt throughout the haptics industry. Fresh
excitement, investment and announcements have begun to appear, and several
companies that were looking increasingly down-and-out are resurfacing. The
challenges are still significant; maturity (read reliability, scalability and
price-point) of many emerging haptics is still far from adequate for adoption,
and worst of all, it’s the same incumbent haptics (ERM motors and LRAs) that
they’ll have to replace. However, this time the requirements are different and
the battle for adoption in the long term as this market grows is far from won.

Haptics2017-2027: Technologies, Markets and Players includes detailed
coverage of all of the haptics technology that are commercial today, or that
will be commercial in the next decade. The report also contains an extensive
section covering haptics in VR, detailing all of the major players, trends and
developments in this space. The report finds that the market for haptics in VR
could generate an additional $500m per year by 2022, as the first significant
sector to reach these kind of hardware revenues since the
smartphone a decade ago.