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Submerged:
trade fair visitor with virtual reality glasses in Barcelona
Photo: David Zorrakino / Europa Press via Getty Images
In cooperation with "The Economist".
Seeing and believing
From Apple to Google, big tech is building VR and AR headsets
They might just be the next big platform after the smartphone
With eyes like saucers, nine-year-old Ralph Miles slowly removes his Quest 2 headset.
"It was like being in another galaxy!"
he exclaims. He has just spent ten minutes blasting alien robots with deafening laser cannons—all the while seated silently in the home-electronics section of a London department store. Sales assistants bustle around, advertising the gear to take home today."That would be sick!”
enthuses Ralph.
"Don't get him started," warns his dad.
Children are no longer the only ones excited about "extended reality", a category which includes both fully immersive virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), in which computer imagery is superimposed onto users' view of the world around them. Nearly every big technology firm is rushing to develop a VR or AR headset, convinced that what has long been a niche market may be on the brink of becoming something much larger.
Meta, Facebook's parent company, has sold 10m or so Quest 2 devices in the past 18 months;
Cambria, its more advanced headset, is coming this year.
Microsoft is pitching its pricier HoloLens 2 to businesses.
Apple is expected to unveil its first headset by early 2023 and is said to have a next-generation model in the pipeline.
Google is working on a set of goggles known as Iris.
And a host of second-tier tech firms, from ByteDance to Sony and Snap, are selling or developing eyewear of their own.
The tech giants spy two potentially vast markets.
One is the kit itself.
Only around 16m headsets will be shipped this year, forecasts IDC, a data firm (see chart).
But within a decade sales may rival those of smartphones in mature markets, believes Jitesh Ubrani of IDC.
"Some people ask, 'Do you think this is going to be as big as what smartphones created?'” says Hugo Swart of Qualcomm, which makes chips for both headsets and phones. "I think it's going to be bigger.”
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