Foreword by VRARA Portugal
Thank you for your interest in Portugal’s VR/AR ecosystem!
We are thrilled to publish this report after a year full of challenges – a special thanks to our sponsor NOS for endorsing our efforts in connecting the ecosystem and making this happen. Cheers!
Through this report, you will access a list of VR/AR stakeholders active in Portugal and, although we are aware this is not a complete list, the quantity (almost 100) and diversity of players in Portugal showcase how positively this market has evolved in recent years.
Hopefully, these numbers and diversity will grow in 2021, along with the VR/AR market worldwide: 5G is rolling out, allowing for new, exciting VR/AR use cases; VR headsets price point is decreasing, while their availability is on the rise and most smartphone makers are now launching smartglasses models.
Besides infrastructure and hardware, VR/AR applications are becoming more and more common in the B2B segment. Of course, this creates a huge demand for VR/AR specific skill sets – and even creates new job profiles.
Moreover, more startups are popping up within the immersive space, looking for smart money, mentorship and all kinds of support to have a better and longer runway, while they prove their business concept and start new investment rounds.
Finally, academic and corporate research centers are now, again more than ever, aware of the transformational opportunity immersive technologies carry and their role in developing knowledge-based solutions.
And of course, to leverage these opportunities, whilst coping with the pandemic, immersive tech businesses are looking to reduce risks in their investment.
Portugal can help with that.
Albeit being a small country,Portugal’s talent pool attracts international professionals looking for a peaceful and stable country, with a muti-cultural background and a high quality of life.
From digital nomads, that find organized peer communities ready to embrace them, to portuguese-speaking talent abroad, that seek to enter other markets and a multicultural setting to develop new language skills. Oh, and we are ranked #7 globally on the English Proficiency Index.
Sitting on the edge of Europe, Portugal has a closer timezone to the American continent than any other country in theEU, which makes it easier to enter the European market throughPortugal, if you’re coming fromCanada, the United States or Mexico. Through theVR/AR Association, we keep in contact with several of these countries’ chapters to streamline partnerships or requests.
Our connection to Brazil is also very important and not just due to our cultural similarities–more and more organizations are looking to tap into a 200+million people market throughPortugal and we are also creating cooperation opportunities with VRARA Brazil.
There are official co-investment opportunities and pre-established partnerships that can help in several ways to soften your landing in our ecosystem. Just reach out to us.
Also, a major thank you to our main partner APDC, that enables and accelerates all our activities - like this report - through its VR/AR section.
You are also invited to attend our webinars and monthly meetups, taking place on the last Thursday of every month.
2021 is only the first year of a decade where 3D content will become the norm. Virtual reality and augmented reality professionals will have a profound impact on how we work, interact with others and even perceive the world. For all the reasons presented before, we firmly believePortugal is a great setting to setup technical, business development and research teams in immersive technologies and we do look forward to a decade where more and more corporate groups, startups and research organizations make that happen.
Have a wonderful year and here’s looking forward to our next report!
Anesio Neto
portugal@thevrara.com
Luis Bravo Martins
luis@thevrara.com
Tiago Loureiro
tiago@thevrara.com
A Word from NOS
With the launch of 5G in Portugal, a new era of digitalization begins where national companies will be able to take advantage of technology to optimize their business and create new disruptive experiences for their customers. Tools like VR/AR are central to this new era, marked by an exponential increase in information consumption and new, immersive formats for it.
Imagining the future has never been easy, but in the case of VR/AR, we have long been witnessing small projects and innovations that surely allow us to unravel not only part of the future but what is already possible to do today. The development we have observed in this area has been exponential, with the maturity of both technologies moving from concepts to ‘ready-to-deploy' in very few years. With 5G, we see the missing piece: a network capable of guaranteeing high levels of experience with total mobility, scale implementations and a reliability unavailable until now.
In the near future, we will undoubtedly see these technologies entering our lives and business operations. Being able to start first, learn without fear and choose the right partners will be decisive for national companies to take advantage of this transformation, in order to differentiate themselves and gain competitive advantages.
NOS is proud to belong to this national ecosystem, helping companies and developers to implement innovative projects capable of driving the country's digital transformation.
