We’re beginning to get some more accurate figures on the current addressable base of the virtual reality market.
Research firm SuperData published a report yesterday claiming that 6.3m VR headsets shipped in 2016.
There’s a clear ‘winner’ at this stage though: Samsung’s Gear VR mobile headset accounted for 4.5m of those shipments according to SuperData, with a long drop to the 0.8m shipments of Sony’s PlayStation VR.
The report estimates 0.4m shipments for HTC’s Vive, just under 0.3m for Google’s Daydream VR, and more than 0.2m for the Oculus Rift.
That in itself is quite a story: the headset whose creator was bought for $2bn by Facebook, which sees it as the next big communications platform, was only the fifth best-selling headset in its launch year – and third in its specific category of desktop-focused high-end VR if you leave out the mobile headsets.
While the figures from SuperData are estimates, they’ll be useful for any music company or startup operating in VR. Samsung’s headset appears to be the most important one to target at this point, even if it’s less powerful than its desktop rivals.
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