No promo left behind: Samsung cornered 72% of the VR market last year

by Daniel Petrov / Feb 09, 2017, 3:25 AM

No promo left behind: Samsung cornered 72% of the VR market last year

By now it's clear that Samsung's Gear VR is one of the most popular headsets around - so much so that, when consumers start thinking of a VR headgear, they almost automatically imagine Samsung's bundle offerings. The company made it a deliberate strategy to put its Gear VR in as many hands as possible by giving it away with its flagship handsets in many cases, and has been doing this for a while now. The end result?

Well, according to the latest estimates, Samsung controlled more than 70% of the consumer virtual reality market last year. Yep, its virtual reality department moved 4.51 million Gear VR units last year, or 71.6 percent of the 2016 market that amounted to 6.3 million devices shipped for a grand total of $1.8 billion in revenue.

Next in line was Sony's PlayStation VR with 12.5%, HTC's expensive Vive with 6.7%, and Google's Daydream View with 4.1%, though Google's contraption didn't start shipping until the last quarter, so it's a commendable result still.

source: Yonhap

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12 Comments

1. aspleme

Posts: 30; Member since: May 18, 2014

Um... No mention of Oculus Rift?

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:32 AM 1

2. Tyrion_Lannister unregistered

Anyone who wants a gaming VR handset would prefer vive over rift hands down. Oculus really screwed it up by first not providing the controller and then when they did, it was already too late and the hype died down. Htc took their sweet time but did it right.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:38 AM 2

5. Macready

Posts: 1817; Member since: Dec 08, 2014

All true but Oculus still shipped nearly twice as many VR sets as HTC.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 5:40 AM 0

6. Macready

Correction, the source PDF actually says HTC sold 420k sets, while Oculus sold 240k sets. Which is more in line with what they both offer in terms of quality.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 6:17 AM 0

9. sgodsell

Posts: 7209; Member since: Mar 16, 2013

This is not the real picture, especially when there is a ton of Cardboard VR devices on Amazon and other sites. Some are really good, and come with a Bluetooth controller, as well as lense adjustments for as little as $20. I know the Vive and Rift offer spacial awareness for their platforms. However some mobile VR platforms are starting to bring some form of spacial awareness to their mobile VR platforms. For instance Daydream VR introduced a 9-axis controller to its platform. I known it's not the same as room or object awareness. However that controller still brings in a level of spacial awareness that wasn't on mobile VR before, and at a fraction of the cost of a Vive or Rift. I can see why a number of analyst are saying that mobile VR/AR is going to dominate, and define where this market is going. BTW the Daydream View headset didn't start shipping until mid December. So I am amazed that it even saw 1%, let alone over 4%.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 10:52 AM 0

11. marorun

Posts: 5029; Member since: Mar 30, 2015

Yes considering google did not cheat like Samsung by giving it free in allmost all phone sold.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:11 PM 0

3. NoToFanboys

Posts: 3231; Member since: Oct 03, 2015

Oculus received huge amounts of hate after being acquired by Facebook.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:42 AM 1

10. marorun

All Samsung S6 and S7 sold or most came with it bundled.. The question is how many regulary use it. Wana bet playstation VR user use it MUCH more often and spend MUCH more money on VR games than all Samsung VR user ?

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:05 PM 0

4. Tyrion_Lannister unregistered

Gear VR is not the best VR headset by far, but the promotion and affordability made it the go-to headset when anyone talks about VR. On the other hand, owning an Oculus or vive means you have to know how to build a PC, and a pretty decent one at least (RX 480 or GTX 1060 at least). That narrowed down the market significantly. Pair that with 700$ price and lousy ad campaign and it surprises me they got that much market share.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 3:42 AM 4

7. Settings

Posts: 2943; Member since: Jul 02, 2014

The fact that it came bundled with Samsung handsets, they will be sure to gain a lot of market share.

posted on Feb 09, 2017, 6:51 AM 1

12. sgodsell

Mobile VR/AR will always be cheaper than the desktop versions. Not to mention the portability and ease of setup, and configuration of mobile VR/AR. Plus the Vive, Rift, and PS VR use cameras. Which requires a lot more processing, or in other words beefier systems in order to process and bring spacial awareness (room and object awareness) to those VR platforms. The current mobile VR platforms don't have that kind of spacial awareness. However more and more spacial awareness is coming to mobile VR/AR platforms. Just look at Googles Daydream VR which brought a limited degree of spacial awareness to that mobile VR platform. Also both GearVR and Daydream VR both support Steam VR games as well.