A new report co-authored by Immerse UK and Digital Catapult identifies Northern Ireland as a key immersive hub.
“The immersive economy in the UK 2019” outlines the scale, nature and economic value of the virtual, augmented and mixed reality ecosystem, its key drivers and barriers. It explores the geographical and industrial spread of companies working with immersive technologies and the growing numbers of innovative products, services, applications and hubs in the UK.
Major advances in head-mounted displays have opened up new opportunities for the entertainment and services sectors, location-based experiences are attracting new audiences and consumer uptake is on the rise. At the same time, the key enabling technologies of artificial intelligence, machine learning and 5G are expected to make immersive experiences richer and more accessible, creating further opportunities content and application producers.
However, the technology and global markets are fast-moving and highly competitive.
The insights and evidence provided in this report will help to identify new opportunities and remove barriers to growth, ultimately realising the full potential of the sector and positioning our UK immersive tech businesses front and centre on an international stage.
This report enables businesses, policymakers, investors and educators to make more informed decisions by tracking the progression of the immersive technologies economy, and by examining how barriers and opportunities are shifting over time.
The report highlights Northern Ireland’s strengths in immersive technology:
“Companies based in Northern Ireland are ideally situated between mainland Europe and the US, and there are communications links to match. There is a 100 gigabyte per second telecoms link between Northern Ireland, Europe and North America and the region has the highest availability of superfast broadband and 4G download speeds in the UK.
“Almost 900 international companies have invested in Northern Ireland, benefiting from operating costs that average 20–30% less than the rest of the UK and Europe, and some of the lowest prime office rental costs in Europe.
“The Northern Ireland immersive ecosystem is primarily made up of micro-businesses, startups and small to medium-sized businesses, with a backdrop of large corporations receiving foreign direct investment. As well as dedicated immersive technology companies in the region, there is a rich vein of small and medium-sized businesses, passionate individuals and enterprises that are investing in this area, and who consider the exploitation of immersive technology to be an important part of their R&D, workflow or business model. These organisations include Kainos, RPS and The McAvoy Group.
“Some of Northern Ireland’s dedicated immersive companies continue to gain traction and benefit from funding and support mechanisms in the region, and from their ability to win new business independently as their portfolio of immersive content and customers expands, for example Boom Clap Play’s success in the UK-wide CreativeXR programme, Sentireal’s collaboration with the NHS and Yellow Design’s expansion.
“More success stories include RETìníZE’s winning pitch in association with London-based INITION for the BBC ‘When AI Met the Archive’ challenge11 and INCISIV, with their continually evolving tech platform that combines in-game VR experiences with a powerful action analytics engine to measure sports performance.
“These are just a few of the examples of the immersive technology companies that are establishing themselves and flourishing in Northern Ireland. New entrants to the sector include David Henderson Design, which has evolved from a standard design and marketing business model into exploring immersive content production, and games studio Italic Pig, which has entered the immersive world with the Infinite Hotel experience pilot, which debuted at SXSW and GDC in 2019, with support from Invest NI and NI Screen.”