由 Zhao Zheng As VR and AR gained significant momentum toward the end of 2025, I compiled the latest information on China’s VR industry—covering policy strategy, market trends, technological frontiers, and product applications—based on various insights from the 2025 World VR Industry Conference (WVIC).
Overall Perspective: China’s top-level view recognizes VR as the culmination of a new generation of information technology, acting as a crucial engine for developing new quality productive forces and driving the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy. At this juncture in late 2025, the industry is transitioning from a phase of technological accumulation to content ecosystem construction, with the deep fusion of “VR + AI” ushering in a new paradigm of “Intelligent Reality.”
Part 1: Strategy and Policy Guidance
The strategic status of Virtual Reality is further elevated, with national and regional policies synergizing to ensure high-quality and sustainable industrial development.
1. Policy Drivers from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT)
The core strategy focuses on “Integration, Supply, Breakthroughs, Application, and Cooperation”:
- Deepen Integrated Innovation: Seize opportunities presented by the fusion of VR with new-generation information technologies like AI and ultra-high-definition video.
- Optimize Product Supply: Enhance the quality and market adaptability of VR products.
- Strengthen Collaborative Breakthroughs: Achieve breakthroughs in core key technologies to realize autonomous and controllable industry chains.
- Expand Industry Applications: Accelerate the integration of VR with key industries and refine the industrial ecosystem.
- Support Regional Development: Continue to back key regions like Jiangxi in developing innovation platforms, nurturing backbone enterprises, and facilitating industrial digital transformation.
2. Local and Industrial Priorities
- Regional Positioning: Jiangxi Province capitalizes on the “VR + AI” opportunity by implementing a “full-chain advancement” strategy; Nanchang City is dedicated to building a world-class VR center.
- Scenario Empowerment: Push VR technology beyond “single-point trials” toward scaled implementation and industrial application, using applications to expand the industry space.
- Ecosystem and Autonomy: Continuously optimize the business environment; the industry calls for increased R&D investment and joint technological efforts to achieve supply chain self-reliance.
Part 2: Market Scale and Competitive Landscape
The competitiveness of China’s VR industry players is significantly strengthened, with shifts in market growth structure, positioning AR as the primary growth engine.
1. Quantitative Analysis of Industry Players (Based on “Top 50 VR Enterprises”)
- Revenue Scale: 31 enterprises generated revenue exceeding 100 million RMB (accounting for over $60\%$), indicating stable growth among leading companies and a rebound in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises.
- R&D Investment: The average R&D expenditure ratio consistently stands at $50\%$, showcasing a strong innovation-driven industry with high technological barriers.
- Technological Qualification: 38 enterprises ( $76\%$ ) were recognized as national-level “Little Giant” enterprises (specialized and sophisticated) or national high-tech enterprises.
- Patents: The total number of invention patents reached 75,084 (over seven years).
2. Market Growth and Structural Changes
- In the first quarter of 2025, online sales of XR devices in China reached 85,000 units, a year-on-year increase of $66.3\%$.
- AR device sales saw a year-on-year increase of $157\%$, accounting for $74.8\%$ of the overall XR market.
- The market share of AR glasses continues to rise with the deepening integration of AI.
- VR large-space content providers were selected for the “Top 50 VR Enterprises” for the first time, emerging as a new market dark horse.
3. Regional Concentration
Beijing continues to lead the nation in the number of “Top 50 VR Enterprises” (22), while Jiangxi (10) and Shenzhen (5) solidly form the second tier, demonstrating significant industrial clustering effects.
Part 3: Technology Frontiers and Core Capabilities
The deep integration of AI and XR is giving rise to the “Intelligent Reality” new paradigm, with Spatial Computing becoming a strategic commanding height.
1. The “AI + XR” Intelligent Reality Paradigm
- Core Concept: AI empowers AR, transforming AR devices from “virtual display tools” into an “intelligent extension of the real world,” enabling cognitive and reasoning capabilities.
- Computing Features: VR scenarios exhibit “Super-Intelligent Fusion” computing characteristics (the convergence of supercomputing and intelligent computing) to meet the explosive demand for compute power in high-precision physical simulation, real-time tracking, and AIGC (AI-Generated Content).
2. Key Technological Fusion Breakthroughs
- Optical Technology: Remains the most critical component. Micro-OLED combined with advanced optical solutions is the mainstream choice, directly determining the user’s visual experience.
- Spatial Computing: Is positioned as the next-generation operating system, following PC and mobile operating systems. Chinese enterprises have independently developed domestic XR operating systems for spatial computing, aimed at resolving pain points such as poor compatibility, high development costs, and closed ecosystems.
3. Industrial Chain Autonomy and Ecosystem
- Full Chain Breakthrough: China has established the most comprehensive XR industry chain globally, achieving “from zero to one” full-domain breakthroughs in Micro-LED chips, optical waveguides, AI algorithms, and operating systems.
- Standards and Patents: The “Virtual Reality Industry Patent Pool” was established, adopting a model of low-cost authorization and shared use to accelerate the standardized development of AI + VR technology and gradually secure the right to define core areas like optical design and AI interaction.
Part 4: Product Evolution and Application Deployment
Product trends lean toward lightweight design and AI integration, with application deployment accelerating bi-directionally across the consumer end (large-space) and the industrial end (inspection/maintenance).
1. Product Types and Trends
- Headset Devices: Enterprises primarily focused on complete devices account for over $20\%$ of the market.
- AR Glasses Evolution: New products trend towards lightweight design (under 80 grams) and high image quality.
- Concept Focus: The concept of “AI Glasses” is replacing “AR Glasses” as the focal point, regarded as the optimal carrier for AI to achieve more natural information perception and richer interaction.
- Content and Tools: The number of content-focused enterprises has grown to 14. Minimalist XR 3D holographic content creation tools have emerged, featuring zero-code rapid editing and full-terminal compatibility, aiming to solve the pain point of content scarcity.
2. Core Application Scenarios and Practices
- Consumer End: VR large-space immersive experience is the main carrier in the tourism boom, with historical content accounting for the highest proportion ($34\%$). It helps enrich tourism content and extend visitor stay time.
- Industrial End: Manufacturing and logistics applications include inspection and remote maintenance, supply chain digitization, and the Industrial Metaverse. AR application is shifting from “technical showmanship” to practicality.
- Professional Fields: Education and healthcare utilize virtual training and innovative teaching applications; telemedicine and VR-assisted personalized rehabilitation programs for children with amblyopia are being implemented.
- Daily Consumption: AR/AI glasses are increasingly becoming “smartphone-like” and “AI-ified,” serving as a new entry point for daily life, covering scenarios such as travel, payment, and office work.
Conclusion
In 2025, China’s VR industry continues the superimposition of policy-driven and innovation-driven development with market explosion. China aims to leverage the “VR + AI” fusion engine to reshape the global industry’s right to define and voice. By utilizing the new entry points of spatial computing and intelligent interaction, the industry supports the development of the digital economy and new quality productive forces.
My Personal View (Challenges and Uncertainties): From the perspective of uncertainty, China’s VR industry faces multiple challenges. On the market side, the explosive growth in AR sales lacks consumer-end necessity, and the VR large-space model faces significant limitations in scalability and content costs. On the technology side, independently developed core components still contend with high costs and mass production challenges, and establishing a domestic spatial computing OS to break international ecosystem barriers requires considerable time and investment. Furthermore, the trade-off between the functionality of “AI Glasses” and user privacy protection is crucial for determining their successful transition from concept to widespread adoption.