Market Research: How Big Is the Installed Base for Virtual Reality?
The most expansive view of the market comes from IDC, which counts all types of 360-degree viewing devices in its tally. The firm figures 10.3 million units were shipped in 2016. That number doesn't include "simplistic" headsets like Google Cardboard, but it does count standalone HMDs (like Microsoft's Hololens and Epson's Moverio) as well as screenless viewers like Google's Daydream View and Samsung's Gear VR — the latter a powerhouse in this emerging market. At CES last week, Samsung America announced that it sold 5 million of the headsets in 2016, putting it on top of the heap.
Sony seems to be in second place, with its PlayStation VR (PSVR) widely thought to have rocketed out of the gate in the last three months of 2016, despite struggling with shortages of AMOLED panels — which are becoming popular for smartphones, putting the squeeze on supplies to makers of HMDs. But while there's general agreement that Sony had a good holiday season, nobody is sure just how many PSVR units the company has managed to ship.
Researcher Trendforce said it expected Sony to come out of 2016 with about 1.5 million units shipped into retail, giving it a comfortable lead over rivals Oculus (which shipped an estimated 650,000 Oculus Rifts) and HTC (an estimated 460,000 Vive shipments). But another analyst, Canalys, is more bearish. It figures trouble sourcing OLED displays limited Sony to just 800,000 PSVR units shipped. Further, Canalys says the HTC Vive is the number three headset, with about 500,000 shipments in 2016, followed by the Oculus Rift with just under 400,000.
Either way, all of the other vendors seem to be swamped right now by the Gear VR. (The other obvious big player in mobile VR, Google's Daydream View, didn't begin shipping until November, limiting its numbers for the year.) Samsung's success in the nascent VR market has been driven by in-store demos and bundled sales with the company's smartphones, and that bodes well for the PSVR, which will similarly benefit from increased awareness and, presumably, bundling deals with the PlayStation console — at least once Sony gets to a position where it has plenty of units in retail channels and ramps up promotion of the device.
See the full story here: http://www.studiodaily.com/2017/01/how-big-is-the-installed-base-for-virtual-reality/