AR and VR market seen reaching $189.37 billion by 2030

The Business Research Company says the augmented reality and virtual reality market is set to more than double from 2025 to 2030, driven by cloud computing, enterprise use and immersive content demand. North America led in 2025, while Asia-Pacific is projected to grow fastest.

Why it matters: - The AR and VR market is moving from niche use cases into broader enterprise, education, healthcare and industrial applications. - The forecast points to a large commercial opportunity for hardware, software, cloud infrastructure and immersive content providers. - The market’s growth rate signals faster adoption across industries that are using immersive tools for training, simulation and customer engagement.

What happened: - The Business Research Company released its Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Global Market Report 2026 on Oct. 12, 2026. - The report says the global AR and VR market will rise from $69.92 billion in 2025 to $85.58 billion in 2026. - The report projects the market will reach $189.37 billion by 2030. - The report puts the forecast-period compound annual growth rate at 22.0%. - North America was the largest regional market in 2025. - Asia-Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing region during the forecast period.

The details: - The 2025-to-2026 increase reflects a 22.4% historical CAGR. - The report links near-term growth to immersive entertainment demand, virtual training adoption, digital transformation spending, gaming and simulation expansion, and lower-cost AR and VR devices. - Future growth is expected to come from extended reality use across industries, immersive education platforms, healthcare integration, enterprise metaverse projects and advanced immersive content investment. - The report highlights rising adoption of AI-powered immersive experiences, cloud-based AR and VR platforms, immersive industrial training, digital twin simulation environments and connected devices. - Cloud computing is a key driver because it provides scalable storage, processing power and software services over the internet. - AR and VR benefit from cloud-based processing and networking that can improve scalability and performance. - Eurostat data released in January 2026 showed 52.74% of European Union enterprises used paid cloud services in 2025, up 7.42 percentage points from 2023. - The regional analysis covers Asia-Pacific, South East Asia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East and Africa. - The report’s 2026 edition includes market attractiveness scoring, total addressable market analysis, company scoring matrix graphics and tables, Excel-based forecasting dashboards, market hotspots infographics, key technology analysis and updated graphics and tables.

Between the lines: - Cloud adoption is becoming a key enabler for AR and VR because the technologies increasingly depend on remote compute and networking rather than only local devices. - The strongest growth appears to be shifting toward enterprise and industrial use, not just consumer entertainment. - The regional split suggests mature demand in North America and faster expansion potential in Asia-Pacific.

What's next: - The market is expected to keep expanding through 2030 as more companies deploy immersive tools across training, simulation, healthcare and education. - Wider use of cloud services and AI-enabled experiences could accelerate performance gains and lower implementation barriers. - Competition is likely to intensify as vendors push deeper into connected devices, digital twins and enterprise metaverse projects.

The bottom line: - AR and VR are transitioning from emerging technologies to a high-growth market with broad enterprise adoption and a projected $189.37 billion size by 2030.