Expert Forecasts of Virtual Reality Adoption Vary Wildly While Actual Sales Are Slow

Is virtual reality about to go mass market, or is it destined to be a hardcore gamer niche? I've been tracking adoption forecasts of VR devices for at least the last two years, so let's take a look:

• In July 2014, KZero predicted there'd be 83 million VR headset owners by 2018.
• In October 2015, IHS Technology forecast a 38 million device install base by 2021.
• In January 2015, Goldman Sachs forecast 40 to 300 million VR/AR devices sold by 2025. (See chart above. Also, love that ass-covering range, guys.)
• In August 2016, Bloomberg/Gartner forecast adoption of premium VR devices (Vive, Oculus, Morpheus) to reach 42 million by 2020.
• Also in August 2016, IDC forecasted 225 Million+ AR/VR devices sold by 2020.

So predictions for even the short term future of VR/AR adoption (i.e., circa 2020) range wildly, anywhere from 38 million to 200 million+. These forecasts vary so wildly, we might as well average the figures out, toss a dart, and hope for the best.

The striking thing? We still don't have much of a baseline of ownership or usage to predict whether any of these numbers are actually achievable!

I mean, just look:

• Gear VR is probably the market leader with about 1 million+ units sold so far.
• Vive HTC has sold about 100,000 units. Based on Steam activity from the consumer model, and sales of the developer kits, Oculus Rift has moved roughly 250,000 units total.
• Google reports 5 million Google Cardboard units shipped, but to judge by activity, attract very little usage.

So not counting Cardboard, we generously have 2 million medium to high-end VR headsets at most in the Western market right now. (The China market for VR seems large, but I believe remains a bit too mysterious too officially count in the total.) So even managing to reach that 38 million forecast number by 2021 (from IHS) is going to be a challenge. To be sure, it may be possible, but we're really not going to have a very clear idea until after this year's holiday sales -- and even then, it'll still be hazy how many of these devices are becoming part of their owners' everyday consumption. Or instead, quickly going onto the shelf to collect dust.

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Comments

[jason]

If you look into the history, these people do not have a crystal ball. More like a flammable one.