VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) HEADSETS MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Challenges And Opportunities

Increasing demand for smartphones is one of the major driving factors for the market growth

Major factors expected to propel growth of the global VR headsets market is proliferation of mobile devices specifically smartphones, as most VR headsets rely on the smartphone to display content and use various specially developed apps for the same. For instance, Matterport VR Showcase is a virtual reality app compatible with Samsung Galaxy series (Android Kitkat 4.4+) and Oculus Gear VR app needs to be installed on the device. According to Coherent Market Insights analysis, share of headset installed base of Samsung gear VR was around 16.3% globally, and the share of mobile phone based VR headsets were about 87% globally, in 2016. Over 2.56 billion smartphone users were reported worldwide in 2016. Hence, the increasing smartphone sales are further increasing the growth of VR headsets market.

Increasing adoption of virtual reality headsets in military and defense sector is expected to be another factor for growth of the market

Demand for virtual reality headsets in military and other scientific application is increasing significantly and is a key factor expected to boost growth of the global virtual reality headsets market. This is attributed to rising need for improvement of mental and physical training program, which includes combat training, flight simulation, battlefield simulation, and vehicle simulation among others. It aids in providing better training experience to the soldiers. For instance, the United States Department of Defense adopted virtual and augmented reality to reduce its training budget. According to the U.S. Navy, it is expected to invest US$ 6 billion to US$ 6.12 billion per year for training and simulation purpose from 2016 to 2021 for virtual reality. This is, in turn, expected to aid in growth of the market over the forecast period.