VR's future in education becoming tangible

Cai used to work for UNICEF when she was studying in New York University, and she later worked for the Ministry of Health on designing policies that promote children's health and education equality in the country.

"VR can provide education resources to areas that are lack of good teachers and facilities at a lower cost," says Cai.

"It can also broaden the horizons of students in rural areas by bringing them to other places in the world virtually."

Besides designing VR courses for K-12 education, the company has applied VR technology in vocational education through a partnership with Guilin University of Electronic Technology on navigation and logistics.

"In the past, a complete navigating simulator costs millions, but now a VR device set designed for the same purpose costs only tens of thousands," adds Cai.

Phantom Whale is not the only company eyeing the VR education market, which Goldman Sachs predicts will have 15 million users in 2025. A market that size would generate $700 million in revenue just from educational software.

In the past year, more than a dozen companies have announced their initiatives in the field in China, including the Nasdaq-listed New Oriental Education & Technology Group, which launched its VR English class on the online video platform of LeTV in August.

Alvin Wang Graylin is the China regional president of Vive, the VR operation of the Taiwan-based smartphone company HTC. In an interview with the People's Daily website in December, he said that although entertainment content is still what fuels the rapid growth of the VR industry now, in the long term, education will become the major growth driver.

"Parents won't spend some 6,000 yuan ($880) on a VR headset for their children to play video games, but if you tell them that through VR, their children could attend classes given by the best teachers in the best schools and universities in the world - they will probably buy it," said Graylin.

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