Capturing the XR Market: Examining Strategies to Reach the Broader Market - An exploratory study of commercialization of XR enabled by 5G

Abstract: Living to some extent in a partly or fully virtual reality is a scenario that may not be as far in the future as many may think, and the development of technologies that enable this is fully underway. This thesis investigates the commercialization of extended reality (XR) technologies in the consumer market and what may facilitate and hinder this commercialization. The emerging ecosystem of actors is analyzed and mapped in order for the industry and academia to receive an overview of the actor landscape. A special focus is also directed towards the value of XR technologies, and how this value can be captured through different revenue models. The research is a qualitative study with abductive reasoning, based on interviews and documents as the main data sources. The collection of data was facilitated by the support of the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson, who see XR as a use case for their 5G technologies. Through 21 interviews with industry experts a more comprehensive view of the XR landscape, potential value-capturing opportunities, and commercialization is obtained. To analyze the findings surrounding the industry landscape the thesis uses concepts such as the ecosystem pie model, vertical integration and ecosystem complementarities and network ties. The relevant revenue models are compiled in the findings and compared to revenue models often occurring in theory in the analysis. The most important commercialization concepts used to synthesize the findings are innovation diffusion models, success factors for commercialization, and concepts for the overarching commercialization process. The results indicate that XR technologies have not yet reached the early majority and in order to do so it is crucial to ensure the timing with a whole- product configuration, support from the adoption network, and to collaborate with early adopters to find key value propositions. The thesis implies that the most important barriers to mitigate are the technological and trialability barriers.