Integration Of Virtual Reality Into Social Media

One of the most critical sectors in the tech industry is social media and the possible integration of VR technology into the social media market creates many opportunities. As one of the leading names in the VR and AR market, Arclight has decided to branch out to this very competitive sector with the introduction of the new Arclight headset. This report analyses why USA is the better option for the launch of the new product when compared to China. To reach the final decision, this report focuses on local laws, education and economic reasons.

Laws

During the launch of a product in a new country, one of the crucial points that should be considered is the laws that may affect this process. There are many laws that may stop companies from expanding to different countries or others that may stop them becoming a monopoly. In case of America and China, this becomes even more relevant to the topic as most of the American social media platforms such as Whatsapp and Instagram are banned by law in the Chinese mainland to be able to enforce the Chinese economy with the local technology companies while at the same time keeping the private information of the citizens in the country. These platforms get replaced by highly popular local platforms such as WeChat and Tencent QQ. In numbers, China has 829,000,000 internet users whereas USA has 292,892,868 (Internet World Stats, 2019) which is caused by the massive population difference. The average daily usage per person in both countries is around 2 hours (Clodagh O’Brien, 2018). Even though China shows more potential in numbers, because of how American social media platforms are widely known around the world, USA would seem to be the better choice in the path to become a global name

Education

Another factor that should be taken into account during the process is the education level of both countries. Even though it does not have a big effect on the use of social media, the use of virtual and artificial reality would definitely be affected by this as Arclight Headset is not an easily affordable product. People can have the chance to try new technology similar to this and even learn about their existence during their education or researches. Comparing the statistics, USA has the 6th highest educated population in the world with 45.67 percent (Abigail Hess, 2018) whereas China is noticeably lower on the list. One of the factors that should not be forgotten is that the population of US is nearly a quarter of China which takes the education level in terms of numbers to the same level. In terms of the utility of this headset on social media platforms, as social media is becoming a very wide ranged information source, it will have an important place in the education system in the future in many ways. The integration of AR allows the users to be able to project objects that would be impossible to access to the real world, which Snapchat has been using for a while. By implementing a similar technology to the education system, it is possible for student to see the end results of the projects before even starting.

Demographics

Lastly, the demographics of the countries are important. There are a few parts that should be considered in the decision process. The first one is urbanization which means living in big and crowded cities, where people have access to these technological resources. As it is easy to guess, VR and AR is more widely used in big cities rather than in small towns. The urban population rate of China is 57.9% whereas in the US this significantly higher with 82% (Index Mundi, 2019). This would mean that citizens would have a higher chance to access to the stores where these products are being sold and also have more opportunities to use them in. As the target market is social media, accessibility becomes a priority because the daily use of social media depends on practicality. Second point that should be considered in demographics is the average age range. Most people who are going to be interested in this technology are students or people who are working in this industry which would lead to an age group of 15-45. US and China have very close numbers in this case where China has an average age of 37.4 and US has 38.1(Index Mundi, 2019). Even though the numbers in terms of the age looks pretty similar, because of the urbanization rates, USA proves to be the better option in demographic means as well.

As discussed throughout the report, both China and United States of America are great options for Arclight not to just introduce a new Virtual Reality headset but also to create connections around the world. After the analysis of the data in terms of demographic, educational and legal means and possible opportunities in both countries, USA proves to be the better option against China for the release of the new Arclight headset.