What Russian businessmen think about VR/AR
This week in St. Petersburg, Russia there was a conference SPEAK. This event was about new technologies, which business uses in Russia. For the first time there was a section devoted to the introduction of VR/AR technologies into business processes. I visited this event and saw very interesting picture that can describe everything in Russia: we are all optimists in theory, but very sceptical pessimists in practice. Misterious russian soul, thank you, count Tolstoy.
That’s why all discussion was split on two part. On the first part, speakers told about huge perspectives, money and world market, but on the second part there were couple of cases and a group therapy session, on which everyone complained about their problems.
Cases
Of course, the most cases were from the field of marketing and entertainment. Souvenir calendars for partners with AR, quests and games in show-rooms obviously were on the top of the discussion, but lets face that it isn’t a huge business, and that technoligies could more. For examle, a budget of every case is near one million rubles (18 000 USD).
Also, there was an interesting case of using VR in real estate: every potential buyer can take a VR-tour of his new flat or house. Sounds pretty cool, a-ha?But the reasonable question is how helpful that is for sales, and answer was that it is very hard to measure, but it pushes buyer to close the deal more quickly.
Problems
Specificity of the Russian economy is such that near 80 percent of the money in it is in the pocket of the government and companies with a huge state share. So, it’s very hard for small startups to get the real contract, but that’s only the half of the problem. Harder to complete that contract without some predictable and unpredictable problems. Also, state business has some specific issues connected with very strange exercises of competition.
But, in the end, all participators of this discussion agreed that Russia couldn’t avoid global trends. They believe in VR/AR technologies in Russian education (especislly, in corporate education), skills training, logistics, tourism etc. And, of course, it would not be Russia if the issues of VR/AR in military technologies were not discussed. But this is another story…