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The real definition of Mainstream!

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
Many commentators have been asking the question of what is "mainstream" and when would we be able to known when VR gets close to achieving this.

Well a recent announcement from Samsung kind of gives a good grounding on what that entails:

Samsung had sold 1 million foldable Galaxy Fold smartphones in just three months.....

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/12/samsung-has-sold-1-million-galaxy-fold-smarthphones/?fbclid=IwAR2N...

So that kinda places the situation in perspective. As has been speculated from recent coverage:

k803718k1474.png

In over six months from the launch of the Oculus Quest a estimates 400,000 have been sold - and while the OculusVR internally had hoped for 1m sales before the end of the year that seems to be a target they may miss, even with the popularity generated by the Index - and reflecting on in this news (if these searches can be turned into sales):

 Quest dominated other VR headsets in search interest in the US. Worldwide.....

https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-dominated-black-friday-search-volume-us-tied-psvr-worldwide/
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959
30 REPLIES 30

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Spuzzum said:
........
...Wait until a full year has passed, especially after Christmas. Judging by posts on Reddit, they may even double that number this holiday season.



The expectations are high, especially after Link announcement, but there is the issue of the limited factory quota. Its clear that the statement "selling all they can build" is true, but there is some conjecture that there is a manufactured scarcity being employed.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Techy111
MVP
MVP
And who said that Kev ? Seems to me that would be a christmas cracking idea....not. To manufacture scarcity sounds like nonsense. So they stop people grabbing them for Christmas and have loads of stock after when nobody will want them.
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.

Congratulations
Adventurer
I think mainstream means pretty much everyone has one or thinking to get one, it will be few years yet before mainstream. When more companies build more VR or working on there own, then that’s you will know it’s nearly mainstream. They can’t go mainstream by sales as people might buy more than one headset.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Techy111 said:

And who said that Kev ? Seems to me that would be a christmas cracking idea....not. To manufacture scarcity sounds like nonsense. So they stop people grabbing them for Christmas and have loads of stock after when nobody will want them.



Very much agree, I have never been a fan of manufactured scarcity since Nintendo was caught doing this for marketing benefit. And as you know its the kind of practice that is not going to be promoted. It will be great to see the 1m sales achieved by the end of the year, and this should vindicate the expectations. As stated this Christmas is the perfect storm for Quest, no excuses.
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Anonymous
Not applicable

kevinw729 said:


Spuzzum said:
........
...Wait until a full year has passed, especially after Christmas. Judging by posts on Reddit, they may even double that number this holiday season.



The expectations are high, especially after Link announcement, but there is the issue of the limited factory quota. Its clear that the statement "selling all they can build" is true, but there is some conjecture that there is a manufactured scarcity being employed.




I don't really buy that, not at Christmas time. Maybe during the initial release months, possibly holding back stock for the Christmas sales, but not holding back during Christmas sales. At least that's not the way I'd do business. And as I said in the rest of my comment...people aren't exactly rich these days, and if you have kids, then you probably didn't have an extra $500 before the summer holidays, or after buying school supplies before September. Most would be saving to buy their kids a Quest for Christmas. There's going to be a lot of Super Dads this year, especially the guy who bought a 128GB for each of his kids.

Anonymous
Not applicable
So, it turns out Samsung did not sell a million units of Galaxy Folds. It's closer to 400,000.

Anyway, it's completely pointless to compare VR sales with phone sales, even if it's "prototype phones". Everyone knows what a phone is, so everyone knows what to expect from it, even if it's a brand new one.
It's not the case for VR, as most people still don't know what it is actually, what it offers exactly. It's an obvious brake to the sales.

Also, mainstream really doesn't matter. It just has to do well enough to live longer.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTcFsdIJ_Xo


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Spuzzum said:
.....
I don't really buy that, not at Christmas time. Maybe during the initial release months, possibly holding back stock for the Christmas sales, but not holding back during Christmas sales. At least that's not the way I'd do business. And as I said in the rest of my comment...people aren't exactly rich these days, and if you have kids, then you probably didn't have an extra $500 before the summer holidays, or after buying school supplies before September. Most would be saving to buy their kids a Quest for Christmas. There's going to be a lot of Super Dads this year, especially the guy who bought a 128GB for each of his kids.




I totally agree, I feel the scarcity was for the launch window and it kinda backfired - and would have expected for the Black-Friday and Christmas that we would be in full swing. 

Interesting discussion going on about the fabrication houses for the Quest, and how one of them is Lenovo - they seem a little unhappy with the Rift-S response and the Link news, and may not be rushing to full-fill quotas - seems odd as they would win both ways?
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

nalex66
MVP
MVP


So, it turns out Samsung did not sell a million units of Galaxy Folds. It's closer to 400,000.

Anyway, it's completely pointless to compare VR sales with phone sales, even if it's "prototype phones". Everyone knows what a phone is, so everyone knows what to expect from it, even if it's a brand new one.
It's not the case for VR, as most people still don't know what it is actually, what it offers exactly. It's an obvious brake to the sales.

Also, mainstream really doesn't matter. It just has to do well enough to live longer.


I’m not sure what the point of the comparison was in the first place—as you say, phones and VR are not comparable markets. But, since this comparison seems to be the basis of this thread, let’s look at it in light of these new numbers. If the Galaxy Fold only sold 0.4 million within the massive smartphone market, that’s a pretty disappointing launch. The Quest, on the other hand, has sold 0.4 million units in the relatively tiny niche market that is VR. That’s a very significant chunk of market share for the Quest to grab in its first 6 months. Sounds to me like the Quest is an overwhelming success, while the Galaxy Fold is a bit of a flop. 

Now, obviously VR is a long way from the mainstream ubiquity of smart phones, but if Quest can match the sales numbers of the latest fad phone, that’s a pretty good sign for VR overall. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


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nalex66
MVP
MVP
Also, Quests are going for over $1000 from resellers these days. With the current Christmas demand, it seems like there’s a good chance Oculus could top 1 million sold by year-end, if they can manufacture enough of them. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo