While a lot of experts are predicting for Extended Reality to be the future, the XR headsets, on the other hand, have experienced a considerable decline of 9% (on a year over year basis) in terms of shipments during the year 2020.
These stats have been provided in the latest research coming from Counterpoint’s Global XR Model Tracker and according to it, this decline was, fortunately, less than the expectations - only because of how the Oculus Quest 2’s performance in the market has been a saving grace this holiday season.
Users are now absolutely loving the improvement in specs including more memory, larger battery, higher resolution, and a much better refresh rate. But more importantly, they have loved the device more because of the affordable price tag. Moreover, one can also say that the pandemic played a bigger role as well since the lockdown forced people to look for more forms of entertainment throughout the year.
Precisely, Oculus managed to dominate the XR market with a 53% share in 2020. Not to forget that the gear was already leading from the front with 44% in 2019 as well.
Diving further deep into the market dynamics, Research Director Peter Richardson told that Virtual Reality (VR) headsets comprised 90% of the total XR shipments that took place in the entire year. The adoption of VR is on the rise as the key players of the industry continue to bring advancements in design, specifications, and features while keeping the limitations of cost in mind. This eventually is also backed by the growth of good quality content on these platforms.
So, previously while the users of VR were limited to enjoy gaming only, the pandemic also became a good enough reason for enterprise users (especially in China) to start with the form factor for education or training.
As the infographic shows (featured below), Oculus remained the biggest XR brand throughout 2020. It is followed by Sony at the second spot that took advantage of its strong PlayStation user base that is still enjoying the five-year-old PlayStation VR. HTC, DPVR, and Pico were third, fourth, and fifth respectively.
Oculus stood out in the list of top five XR devices too as three of the most loved headsets belonged to the company. But with that being said, it is expected that we will see strong competition in the upcoming years.
Right now the segment doesn’t really witness a lot of new launches when compared to other categories. The reason behind it is very obvious as such innovation still requires improvements in form-factor, display, power, sensor perspective, and also supply chain. But with Apple and Sony (PSVR 2) making their entry, the future does seem to be very bright!
Apart from that, Microsoft and Varjo are also aiming for a wider enterprise-level approach in order to be on top in this segment. Hence, if these companies get successful with their aims, we will see use cases for XR on a bigger scale including field force support, product design and development, construction and fabrication, manufacturing, logistics, education and training, media, healthcare, and many more.
Another way can be to divide the XR’s consumer use into VR and AR. By doing so, the VR devices can be dedicated to the strongest use case of gaming, whereas, AR can then be confined to smartphone displays via applications.
All in all, XR will continue to grow double-digits in the next five years.
These stats have been provided in the latest research coming from Counterpoint’s Global XR Model Tracker and according to it, this decline was, fortunately, less than the expectations - only because of how the Oculus Quest 2’s performance in the market has been a saving grace this holiday season.
Users are now absolutely loving the improvement in specs including more memory, larger battery, higher resolution, and a much better refresh rate. But more importantly, they have loved the device more because of the affordable price tag. Moreover, one can also say that the pandemic played a bigger role as well since the lockdown forced people to look for more forms of entertainment throughout the year.
Precisely, Oculus managed to dominate the XR market with a 53% share in 2020. Not to forget that the gear was already leading from the front with 44% in 2019 as well.
Diving further deep into the market dynamics, Research Director Peter Richardson told that Virtual Reality (VR) headsets comprised 90% of the total XR shipments that took place in the entire year. The adoption of VR is on the rise as the key players of the industry continue to bring advancements in design, specifications, and features while keeping the limitations of cost in mind. This eventually is also backed by the growth of good quality content on these platforms.
So, previously while the users of VR were limited to enjoy gaming only, the pandemic also became a good enough reason for enterprise users (especially in China) to start with the form factor for education or training.
As the infographic shows (featured below), Oculus remained the biggest XR brand throughout 2020. It is followed by Sony at the second spot that took advantage of its strong PlayStation user base that is still enjoying the five-year-old PlayStation VR. HTC, DPVR, and Pico were third, fourth, and fifth respectively.
Oculus stood out in the list of top five XR devices too as three of the most loved headsets belonged to the company. But with that being said, it is expected that we will see strong competition in the upcoming years.
Right now the segment doesn’t really witness a lot of new launches when compared to other categories. The reason behind it is very obvious as such innovation still requires improvements in form-factor, display, power, sensor perspective, and also supply chain. But with Apple and Sony (PSVR 2) making their entry, the future does seem to be very bright!
Apart from that, Microsoft and Varjo are also aiming for a wider enterprise-level approach in order to be on top in this segment. Hence, if these companies get successful with their aims, we will see use cases for XR on a bigger scale including field force support, product design and development, construction and fabrication, manufacturing, logistics, education and training, media, healthcare, and many more.
Another way can be to divide the XR’s consumer use into VR and AR. By doing so, the VR devices can be dedicated to the strongest use case of gaming, whereas, AR can then be confined to smartphone displays via applications.
All in all, XR will continue to grow double-digits in the next five years.
 Market With More Than 50 Percent Share){kind=link}