VR HMD Market Sales Estimates So Far: Gear VR 5M, Playstation VR 750K, Vive 450K, Oculus 350K

The numbers that matter most for anyone in the VR industry or even vaguely interested in it, after the 2016 holidays:

The companies that make the major headsets do not report their sales, and all of them said they were pleased with the results so far. SuperData Research, a technology research firm, estimated that Oculus had sold 360,000 headsets and HTC 450,000 since their products went on sale in March and June, respectively. Both of those headsets require high-end PCs with powerful processors. The firm estimated that Sony, which began selling a virtual reality headset in October, has sold about 750,000.

And Samsung has recently reported 5 million total Gear VR sales. So: Less than 7 million brand name HMD VR devices. For those keeping track of the reality of virtual reality this year versus the virtual reality hype, this is what forecasters were predicting last year:

IDC forecast a market of 225 million VR/AR devices would be sold by 2020... yeah, no. Bloomberg/Gartner's August 2016 forecast of 42 million devices by 2020 is much more plausible, but even that's on the high side. And even then, 42 million is less than the install base for high-end videogame consoles like the Playstation 4, which has 53 million. Now that consumers have spoken, expect future forecasts (and excitement over VR) to become much more muted. 

Please share this post:

Tweet

 

Comments

[Clara Seller]

I'm gonna make a wild guess that there is nothing surprising here to people, like me, who have no investment in whether this product succeeds or not. I think that we are on the cusp of a disappointing period for the corporate mentality. I think that the sheep are slowly waking up. There has always been obvious major problems with the very foundation of this product. There are limits to what consumers will sacrifice to fill the endless cry-baby needs of those at the top of these industries. You still need peons to want your crap.

Sansar, take note. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to add 1+1 and get 2. (1) You've bet the farm on building a platform around a crippled product with little solid indication it's going to walk any time soon + (1) You've betrayed your dedicated customer base by ignoring what they want and not caring one iota about what they need. = (2) Predictable Colossal Failure.

[sirhc deSantis]

You are getting good at this malarky http://tinyurl.com/zen99zs

Those numbers seem low even to an old fart cynic like me. I mean there is hype and there is - well what is this now?

Perhaps everyone is gearing up (haha) for the real next big thing in single shard real time multiplayer 'experiences'. My local one is tentatively called 'Civil War:UK' and the additional content available should be massive.