Korea's XR Competitiveness Lags Behind the US by 2 Years and China by 1 Year

On the 27th (local time), a visitor at the 'Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024' held in Barcelona, Spain, is trying on Apple's mixed reality (MR) headset 'Vision Pro.' 2024.02.28 Yonhap News Agency

Extended Reality (XR) technology, encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (XR), and Mixed Reality (MR), is found to be lagging not only behind the United States but also China and Japan. It has been pointed out that demonstration projects should be expanded and convergence-type talent nurtured to ensure that domestic research and development (R&D) achievements bear fruit.

According to the report "Trends and Competitiveness Enhancement Measures of the XR Industry by Country" released by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade on the 30th, South Korea's overall competitiveness in the XR industry scored 75.4 points, significantly lower than the United States (95.6 points), China (85.0 points), and Japan (78.8 points). Based on the survey, it can be seen that South Korea is approximately two years behind the United States and about one year behind China in technology.

This result is based on an expert perception survey conducted by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade in May this year, where the country with the highest technology was set at 100 points, and a six-month gap was evaluated as a 5-point difference. The United States led in all fields including devices, content, and platforms. South Korea was found to be inferior to competing countries except for the telecommunications network environment (92.5 points).

The United States is leading the XR industry through proactive investments by companies such as Meta (Facebook's parent company), Apple, and Microsoft (MS), maintaining a virtuous ecosystem from devices to platforms. Recently released AR glasses from Meta and Google are equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) assistant functions, and Apple's Vision Pro is pioneering spatial computing that eliminates the boundary between virtual and real worlds.

China is supporting the nurturing of metaverse and XR-related companies and the construction of industrial complexes at the central government level, while local governments are actively implementing region-specific specialized policies.

South Korea plans to launch new products early next year through collaboration among Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises such as P&Solution and Retinal are steadily striving to enter overseas markets. The government also legislated the "Virtual Convergence Industry Promotion Act" this year, becoming the world's first to legalize support for the XR industry.

According to market analysis firm Statista, the global XR market size is expected to reach $40.4 billion in 2024 and grow at an average annual rate of 8.97% to reach $62 billion by 2029. Among this, South Korea's VR and AR sales in 2022 were 1.25 trillion KRW (approximately $8.5 billion), accounting for only 2.6% of the global market ($32.1 billion).

The "dedicated device and component manufacturing" sector, corresponding to devices, accounted for only 3.5% (43.4 billion KRW) of domestic sales, indicating an even more negligible scale, highlighting the urgent need for support and nurturing of the XR industry.

The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade emphasized, "To enhance South Korea's XR industry competitiveness, strategic R&D and demonstration expansion, activation of the domestic XR ecosystem, and nurturing of convergence-type talent are necessary. It is essential to expand demonstration projects so that R&D achievements of XR device companies can lead to market creation, and integrated planning of hardware and software from the planning stage is required."

They also stressed the need to promote the creation of a domestic XR industry ecosystem through differentiation and collaboration of XR alliance consultative bodies operated by various ministries such as the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Along with this, they proposed continuous education linking hardware and software to cultivate convergence talent and strengthen practical capabilities of incumbent workers and experienced personnel.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.