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:
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:
So not counting Cardboard, we generously have 2 million medium to high-end VR headsets at most in the Western market right now. (
[To see links please register here]
, 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.Please share this post:
[To see links please register here]