According to a new survey by Parks Associates, nearly 50 percent of U.S. broadband households who try a virtual reality headset plan to buy one.
(Image courtesy Parks Associates.)
In addition, 3.5 percent of broadband households, or about 3.4 million households, already own a virtual reality headset.
Despite the recent media attention to virtual reality, however, many people are still unfamiliar with the technology.
Brett Sappington
“Currently, more than 60% of U.S. broadband households claim to know little or nothing about virtual reality,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research, at Parks Associates, in a statement.
According to the report, virtual and augmented reality technologies have potential beyond the limits of tech enthusiasts, with benefits to multiple industries, but companies first need to expand consumer familiarity and comfort before they can reach even early mass-market penetration.
The Oculus Rift was the best-known of the brands, recognized by about 4.5 percent of respondents, followed by the Samsung Gear VR, PlayStation VR and Google Cardboard at around 3 percent each.
(Image courtesy Parks Associates.)
As a personal note, I do a lot of demos of VR headsets to general public audiences, and people are always asking me for the Amazon links to where they can buy the headsets. People seem to like the Mattel View-Master, the VR Fold and other folding sets, the Powis VR, and the FiiT VR headsets. There’s also a lot of ethusiasm for the Gear VR, from those who have Samsung phones. And people really really love Daydream — but nobody can buy it yet because nobody has the Pixel yet (or the other compatible phones, which have just started coming out a couple of weeks ago).
My son loaned me his Vive while he went on vacation. My system has the minimum required though the graphics card is only geforce 970 others have accessed using it. Regardless, after 4 frustrating nights of spending hours trying to get it to work I had to give up. At $800 plus $400 for a graphics card update I’m not about to buy in. I would have gone for the $800 but that would have meant saving up for a long time but $1200 just is over my budget. The headsets requiring a phone are a no go for me as I don’t care to pay for monthly service forever for a smart phone – my dumb phone account is way to cheap for my unlimited plan and I just won’t part with that deal. Guess vr is out for me despite my initial excitement…..I feel very disappointed.