There has been so much hype surrounding the Virtual Reality technology but it doesn’t seem to be encouraging investors. In the last three months, sales in the entire market have been slow. The nascent market for VR headsets has Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) and Samsung taking the lead so far however.
Samsung VR headset versus Sony
According to an International Data Corporation report Samsung is dominating the market with its Gear VR headset. In the first quarter, the company claimed a 21.5% market share, having shipped close to 490,000 headsets. These figures are expected to increase with the release of an updated Samsung Galaxy S8 Smartphones, which is approaching.
However, this is the first time that IDC is giving figures of VR headset shipments but apparently, it has not disclosed information about previous quarters. Sony takes the second position with its 429,000 PlayStation VR headsets, which were shipped in the first quarter. They may not be as compelling as those of the competitors but they still have an upper hand thanks to the fact that millions of people own a compatible Sony gaming console.
On the other hand, several big video game publishers are making clear considerations of incorporating some of their big-name titles into the PlayStation VR.
Other market competitors
There is a rapid market growth according to IDC which says shipments are up 77.4% year over year. This is very possible because apart from Samsung and Sony, HTC and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Oculus Rift headsets are not leaving anything to chance. In the first quarter, HTC and Oculus shipped 191,000 and 100,000 respectively Rifts, which explains how tight the race is.
It is worth noting that despite HTC Vive being the most expensive VR headset on the market at $800 it has obtained unique popularity in the commercial space. This may have triggered the dropped of prices of the Oculus Rift by Facebook in an effort to entice more customers and VR enthusiasts. Meanwhile, Sony’s stock traded at $36.51 a decline of $0.11 or 0.30%