Sales of VR headsets in the U.S. this year declined 2% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion as of early December, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm NPD Group, but Apple could transform the shrinking VR headset market overnight, Ben Arnold, NPD’s consumer electronics analyst, says.
A major question for next year remains whether Apple, as long rumored, will unveil a VR headset.
Apple could create a compelling VR headset with an accompanying software ecosystem, Arnold said.
Additionally, Apple’s reputation as a leader in consumer technology could provide a spark to the dim VR market, making the technology more attractive to the general public.
“If one company has the ability to transform the VR market overnight, it’s Apple,” said Gebbie. “With its hugely loyal fanbase, many of whom are comfortable with spending large amounts of money on technology, if Apple was to launch a headset we expect that it would perform very well.”
Apple is reportedly building a VR headset with AR features for a release as soon as 2023.
MacDailyNews Take: Focused on developers at first with a premium-priced headset, but the revolution will follow when Apple’s AR smartglasses are finally released!
Apple has the custom silicon. Apple has the installed base. Apple has the ecosystem. Apple has the services. Apple will have the profitable portion of the mixed-reality headset market. And then, a few years later, Apple will take the profitable portion of the smartglasses (AR) market, too.
And some people will slap their foreheads and lament, “I could’ve bought Apple shares under $140!” – MacDailyNews, May 24, 2022
Apple’s smartgoggles will be cool, but it’s the subsequent Apple smartglasses that will change the world. – MacDailyNews, July 11, 2022
Augmented Reality is going to change everything. — MacDailyNews, July 21, 2017
Someday, hopefully sooner than later, we’ll look back at holding up slabs of metal and glass to access AR as unbelievably quaint. — MacDailyNews, July 28, 2017
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What makes this person think the consumer masses want to wear a bulky headset made by any company. By the time Apple shows its VR headset, every major tech company will have its own custom silicon chips. That’s the trendy thing to do nowadays. Besides, Apple is going to charge quite a bit for that VR headset and people are not going to pay $3000 if they’re balking at paying $1200 for a smartphone. I’m more interested in those AR glasses if they cost $1000 or so.
I missed the memo where we went from relatively sleek smart-glasses (I ran into Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford in 2013 and Larry snapped a pic for me with Sergey wearing Google Glass), to a bulky VR headset. The mass market doesn’t want an expensive toy that you only use at home, it wants fashionable, wearable devices that incorporate into their day-to-day life. Don’t tell me Apple hasn’t been able to develop something leaps and bounds better than Google Glass after a decade!
I wonder if the glasses will eventually tie in quite closely to the Apple Car as and when it ever reveals itself. The potential to offer something of a 5th/6th Gen fighter pilot experience within a car must be appealing and a rather more achievable goal than full autonomy of the vehicle though whether it will catch on to the masses is to be seen. But I can see the appeal if Apple as usual wishes to differentiate its product and is certainly best placed to achieve this especially as you see how they are getting CarPlay into the core of the car to get such control taken for granted and then add their own Coup de grâce. Interesting possibilities.