>It was 23 billion dollar market in 2023.
How is that possible? Assuming an ASP of $333 USD (which is too high), this would be >70mio sold headsets?
How is that possible? Assuming an ASP of $333 USD (which is too high), this would be >70mio sold headsets?
This seems to be inconsistent with these numbers
Statista has about 11 million sold VR headsets sold last year. That's not mainstream, that's a niche.
These things follow a curve, for laptops theres steep drop offs at 3, 5 and 8 years.
98% of 3 year old devices
60% of 5 year old devices
5% of 8y old devices.
So you’d need to apply a sliding scale.
Macbooks feel pretty ubiquitous, you cant use the entire 33y run of Macbooks to imply that the demographic is an order of magnitude more than what the parent implied.
When it really became popular -- say Elvis gyrating those hips -- he alone sold 10 million records in a year. And critics then talked of it as a fad that would die out. Elvis would continue to record, continue to sell millions, but eventually - well he died, but rock 'n roll the idea, the genre lived on. In fact rock 'n roll songs were written about how it will always rock 'n roll in defience of the "fad" label.
And ~fifty/sixty years later, there are still rock 'n roll bands selling millions/records/year. Not Elvis but the genre remains. We can't quite compare records sales now anymore because physical media just isn't sold really anymore.
That "staying power" isn't something VR headsets have (yet). Laptops have that. Critics say that VR is a fad and I think that's more what they mean. They say more critical things as well, but that's sort of the gist.
Another example is the automobile:
“[Motor cars] have the appearance of a fad, and an extremely dirty, dusty, inconvenient fad… These crude impracticable machines are unlikely for many years to displace in the Englishman’s affection a fine trotting horse and a smart trap.” -- Anonymous Horserider
It's too soon to tell with VR headsets, but their limited capability, high price, and well: relative usefulessness seems not in their favor.
There will be always grumblers but they also often point out fads correctly. 3D TVs are a good example, I think. Or quadrophonic records.
Also, yeah, Apple is kind of niche in computer sales. Maybe not in very affluent parts of the US but globally less than 10% in desktop and notebooks each.
Also also - VR might be a growing niche. I'm not arguing that. Hype's over but apparently there is still growth.