Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a leading research and consulting firm, claims that the stereoscopic 3D market is poised for rapid growth in the immediate future. In particular, close to one million dedicated stereo-3D (S3D) PCs will ship in 2010. That number will grow to 75 million by 2014 as stereo-3D becomes ubiquitous, especially for video games.

“Gaming will be the vehicle for kick-starting the stereo-3D PC market. The gaming segment has the largest inventory of content and the most vocal enthusiasts [who] will ignite the imagination of the non-gamers. However, our forecast is that the S3D market will soar within the next three years based on the expectation that good quality content will be produced, and the incremental cost for stereo-3D will diminish, if not disappear. Otherwise history will repeat itself and it will be reduced to a small volume novelty market,” said Jon Peddie, the head of JPR.

Although most PCs will be stereo-3D capable due to the GPUs that are in them, not all PCs will be S3D PCs because they need a special monitor, glasses, and appropriate content. However, stereo-3D PCs will be very attractive to several important market segments. JPR expects to see S3D PCs achieve a much higher growth rate than their more traditional counterparts and, of course, they will have a higher average selling price.

As a result, the stereo-3D PC market will be very attractive to PC manufacturers and content suppliers. Jon Peddie Research forecasts that the total available market for stereo-3D PCs, peripherals and content will be $34 billion by 2014.

Even though JPR seems to be very optimistic about stereo 3D gaming and S3D technology in general, it should be noted that stereo-3D will represent a fraction of the whole consumer electronics and video games market. Even by 2014 far not everyone will have S3D HDTVs and therefore only a fraction of video games will be designed for stereoscopic 3D output. Moreover, if by 2014 there is no new generation of video game consoles, then there will hardly be a lot of stereo-3D games designed for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, consequently, there will be only a number of S3D games on the PC.

Tags: Stereo 3D, JPR, Nvidia, ATI, AMD, , Intel, Geforce, Radeon