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Virtual reality (VR) headsets take not sold well in 2022. Nosotros've been reporting on VR adoption since the first headsets launched in 2022, and the news from this summer hasn't been positive. Indirect data, gathered from Amazon sales rankings and similar sources, has indicated a drib in production shipments across the board, but more than concrete data has been harder to come by. Thanks to a new report from IDC, we now have some numbers to put behind these trends.

The VR market has contracted 33.seven percent in Q2 2022 compared with the same period in Q2 2022, according to IDC. There are several reasons why headset sales take fallen so much. The largest source of decline is that smartphone manufacturers similar Samsung are no longer bundling VR headsets as part of a smartphone purchase. Shipments of screenless VR systems barbarous from 1 million headsets in Q2 2022 to 409,000 in Q2 2022. As for Oculus, Sony, and HTC, we finally have some physical shipment data in that location too. IDC writes:

Tethered VR headsets declined 37.three percentage in 2Q18 largely because major brands like Oculus and Sony were unable to maintain the momentum established during a period of price reductions in 2Q17. Equally a result, the two brands managed to transport 102,000 and 93,000 headsets respectively in 2Q18. The category leader, HTC, shipped shut to 111,000 headsets (excluding the standalone Vive Focus) thanks to the growing popularity of the Viveport subscription service as well as the launch of the Pro headset.

AR-VR-Growth

IDC notes that standalone VR headset salesSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce are up 417 pct twelvemonth-on-year and attributes this to devices like the Oculus Become and Xiaomi Mi VR, which shipped 212,000 headsets over the same menstruum. It also states that commercial uses for VR are growing, with 20 per centum of shipments destined for commercial deployments, up from fourteen percent side by side yr. Trying VR remains quite hard for consumers, and some companies are turning towards commercial applications while the consumer side of the market sorts itself out.

How Many VR Markets Are There?

The IDC study highlights some positive trends and suggests that the decline in sales is due to unbundling and a lack of associated discounts, merely this doesn't really address larger concerns most the infinite. One trouble is that we don't really take i VR market. If yous buy a Samsung Gear, you lot have access to a dissimilar ready of experiences than if y'all buy an Oculus Go, which offers a different set of experiences than an Oculus Rift. The PlayStation VR would commonly exist nominally grouped with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, only if we approximate on the basis of catalog, at that place are some significant differences between what the PSVR offers and what you tin can play with Vive and Rift. And the differences aren't e'er but a question of headset fidelity — dissimilar VR solutions back up different types of controls.

We commonly talk about markets in terms of price bands and product segments (consumer, commercial, enterprise, so on), only in this case, y'all've got consumers who bought headsets that interface with their smartphones, a dedicated standalone solution with its ain controller from Oculus, the PC gaming headsets from Oculus and HTC, and then Sony's own PSVR. If all y'all care about is VR, period, the shifts to commercial spending over consumers and the jockeying for position all make for an interesting horse race. But in that location'southward non much in this report to advise that gaming-centric VR is doing particularly well, and Sony's PSVR clearly isn't selling at more than than a snail's footstep. Sony may accept finally hit 3 million headsets less than 2 years after launch, only with just 93,000 headsets sold this quarter it obviously didn't set any sales records there. It's not clear that the churn in the infinite or the launch success of the Oculus Go represent the kind of meaningful growth VR needs to establish itself every bit a presence in consumer markets.

Now Read: VR Sales are Tanking, Is the High-End VR Market Dead, and Microsoft Killed Its Ain Xbox One VR Solution