Omdia: The consumer-grade virtual reality market will continue to decline in 2024, with a year-on-year decrease in headset sales of 10% to 6.9 million units.

Omdia's latest research shows that the consumer virtual reality market will continue to decline in 2024. The sales of headsets are expected to decrease by 10%, from 7.7 million units in 2023 to 6.9 million units in 2024. It is projected that the market will further decline in 2025, in line with Omdia's previous forecasts. This outlook reflects a challenging period for the consumer VR industry until a rebound is expected in 2026. George Jijiashvili, Senior Principal Analyst at Omdia, commented, "The highly anticipated debut of the Apple Vision Pro failed to spark the expected recovery of the VR industry, and ten months later, its momentum is waning as developers still lack strong interest." Meanwhile, early sales data of the new entry-level Quest 3S show that Meta's headset sales have not seen significant growth, further confirming Omdia's view that as long as VR exists in its current form, it will remain a niche market. In 2024, the number of actively used virtual reality headsets decreased by 8% to 21.9 million units. This is primarily due to the low upgrade rate among Quest 2 users, as over 20 million units of Quest 2 have been sold since 2020. Despite this, growth is expected to occur by 2029, depending on Meta's continued commitment to this category and the more affordable Apple Vision Pro model expected to be released in 2026. Omdia's latest "Consumer VR Headset and Content Revenue Forecast" shows that VR content spending in 2024 is $904 million and is projected to increase to $1.3 billion by 2029. In comparison, console content spending will reach $37.4 billion in 2024, highlighting the emerging nature of the consumer VR market. Since the pandemic, consumer engagement has been declining, with limited new content attracting attention and developers questioning the return on investment in VR projects, painting a worrisome outlook. Due to the hesitation of device manufacturers to make significant investments, the current development trend indicates a shift in VR headsets directly towards mixed reality. Jijiashvili added, "The focus is shifting towards lightweight AR glasses, offering all-day, 'anytime, anywhere' multimodal AI access. Manufacturers hope that this approach will help normalize facial-based spatial computing and ultimately stimulate mass market adoption of VR."