WiMi Hologram Cloud Inc (WIMI)

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Hundreds of billions of AR 5G market opportunities, AR+SDK marketing such as Snap/Wime Hologram drives growth.

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https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/relnews/us/2021-03-02/doc-ikftpnnz0527756.shtml

March 02, 2021 10:09 CCTIME

In many people's minds, VA/AR technology is just an emerging technology. In the future, it may be integrated into all aspects of our lives, including education, entertainment, shopping, travel, etc., just like the Internet. AR is the combination of virtual information and the real world, including both virtual and reality; while VR is immersed in the virtual world, with only the virtual end; MR is an upgrade of AR, which strengthens the integration of virtual and real.

Generalized AR covers AR/MR/CR/XR, etc. Due to its openness, the future application and market space of AR far exceeds VR. From the first day of their birth, VR and AR have had a great impact on the visual experience and interactive experience of the entire human society, especially AR.

In the past, our way of interacting was constantly changing. After the advent of computers, human-computer interaction was combined with computers. Later, mobile phones and smart phones appeared, and a large amount of human-computer interaction was transferred to the mobile terminal. And AR creates a new and more intuitive way to interact with computers and the real world. In the AR world, the operation of computers has become familiar gestures and pictures, and the concept of virtual desktops no longer need to be defined by the screen size of the physical display.

In view of this easy-to-use attribute and wide application potential, we believe that AR technology has created a more intuitive, convenient and rich information interaction channel, and it is very likely to become the next generation of human-computer interaction and computing platforms.

In the past ten years, AR has gradually moved from laboratory and concept to real-world application. It has gone through the germination and resurgence stages, and is now approaching its explosion. The next 5 years should be a period of rapid development of AR from initial commercial use to rapid popularization.

According to Statista's forecast, the overall market size of AR will exceed US$200 billion by 2022. In addition, DigiCapital and Goldman Sachs respectively predict that hardware, as the core foundation of the AR industry, will still occupy a large proportion in the next 5-6 years.

In the process of the implementation of AR's commercial scenes, I personally think that AR will be the first to develop in toB scenes, especially advertising, education, tourism, entertainment, etc. Their decision-making model is different from that of C-end consumers, and the real scene is relatively fixed, and the scene maturity is higher.

In recent years, Snap's revenue has continued to rise, reaching US$911 million in the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 62% year-on-year. It is reported that Snap CEO Evan Spiegel had optimistically predicted at the annual investor meeting that under good economic conditions, the company's revenue will continue to grow in the next few years, and is expected to maintain an annual growth rate of about 50%. At the same time, it will continue to optimize the content discovery function and the short video function Spotlight to increase user activity and expand the exposure of AR advertising.

AR technology can meet a variety of needs such as customer service, advertising, data, and business, but the question now is whether it needs the popularization of AR glasses to promote AR business. At present, Snap's strategy is to develop innovative technologies such as AR filters into a platform by providing creators and developers with tools, distribution platforms and user groups. At present, relying on Snap's five major modules: filters, maps, chat, flashing videos and short videos after reading, have laid the foundation for building a platform.

Spiegel said:
AR entertainment tools are gradually upgraded to more practical tools, using computer vision technology, the camera can solve mathematical equations, identify wine signs and so on. Currently, more than 200 beauty brands have uploaded product numbers to Snapchat.

In fact, the AR advertising market is still in its infancy, and Snap is one of its early promoters. At present, 35 million merchants have settled on Snap Map, and this model of combining commerce and LBS AR seems to have development potential. In addition, the application scenarios of mobile AR combined with e-commerce and retail are still in the development stage.

In addition, WiMi Hologram's holographic AR advertising software allows customers to insert real or animated three-dimensional objects into video clips, and seamlessly integrate the objects with scene clips in the video, while advertisements are mainly inserted in film and television programs. The AR marketing model is also being vigorously deployed on the commercial development path of short videos.

Compared with traditional digital advertising, holographic AR technology advertising is more interactive and cost-effective and flexible. It can identify repeated advertising spaces suitable for multiple brand advertising and save corresponding costs.

The holographic AR entertainment products of WiMi Hologram include payment middleware software, game distribution platform and holographic MR software. Payment middleware software mainly refers to the company's software that can be fully integrated with various types of mobile applications.

Analysts predict that AR hardware, solutions, VR games, and AR/VR applications in vertical industries such as education, healthcare, marketing, and manufacturing will become the subdivision track that capital will focus on in 2021. The leading companies in the three fields of terminal hardware developers, solution providers, and content data producers will become major gold attractors, and the industry valuation level will rise.

The industry is currently in a period of adjustment, and the capital in the VR/AR hardware field is cold. Only brand manufacturers continue to develop and launch new products, and more funds are entering the fields of content and application technology. Weibo and other institutions have strategically invested US$61.58 million in Weimei, once again allowing Weimei to attract public attention. The current products of WiMi Hologram mainly include the development and production of distribution and operation services, applications and content.

From the value of the industry chain, WiMi Hologram plays the role of an intermediate supplier, connecting the SDK operating platform and application developers. Apple, Google, Baidu, JD.com, Alibaba, and NetEase all have their own AR SDK platforms, while WiMi Hologram, as an intermediate platform, supplements the basic toolkit provided by the SDK platform, allowing users to complete software applications more conveniently program.

From the perspective of business model, WiMi Hologram is a solution provider, which integrates applications, content, and services according to the real needs of downstream customers, and outputs complete solutions. Recently, WiMi Hologram won the bid for the second phase of holographic remote interaction between China Mobile and the media cloud platform. As a professional company for 5G communication holographic applications, WiMi Hologram has always been committed to independent R&D and investment in 5G core fields.

According to reports, WiMi Hologram was established in 2015, Nasdaq stock code: WiMi. WiMi Hologram focuses on holographic cloud services, mainly focusing on vehicle AR holographic HUD, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR, head-mounted light field holographic equipment, holographic semiconductor, holographic cloud software, holographic car navigation and other professional fields, covering from holographic car AR technology, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR technology, holographic vision semiconductor technology, holographic software development, holographic AR advertising technology, holographic AR entertainment technology, holographic ARSDK payment, interactive holographic communication and other holographic AR technologies. It is a holographic cloud integrated technology solution provider.

In general, the rise of AR applications in various industries will have a certain time sequence. In the next 5 years, AR will first make breakthrough developments in toB industries. When the C-side technologies are relatively mature, AR may move to the C-side, and it will appear on the C-side on a larger scale, which can even replace mobile phone applications to a certain extent.

On the whole, AR is very likely to become an interactive way to lead the next wave of business after computers and mobile phones.

In the past few years, VR has had an investment boom, but at that time, due to insufficient hardware and underlying technology support, it experienced some bubbles. But even if there were bubbles and bottlenecks before, we can still see that the industry has been developing steadily. With the popularization of the entire mobile Internet and 5G, AR will usher in a greater explosion in the future.

After computers and mobile phones, AR will lead the next wave of business. The maturity of AR-related basic technologies has fully reached the critical point of commercialization. The involvement of major manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei in the AR glasses market will call for the maturity of the related industry chain faster. AR glasses have both technical complexity and fashion characteristics, and it is difficult for the follow-up commercial pattern to appear an oligopoly pattern. AR application ToB will be ahead of the ToC field in terms of time. From an industry perspective, there will also be a certain time rhythm due to factors such as technical difficulty and requirements.

With the development of 5G and edge computing in the future, AR is very likely to enter the channel of rapid development.