Spatial Computing will see mass adoption for the exact reason VR hasn’t
I bought my first VR headset, the Oculus Rift DK2, about nine years ago. It took a while to get everything connected, there were wires running everywhere — I felt a bit like a Borg connecting myself to cube.
In fact, I had to buy a new gaming PC just to run the DK2 in any reasonable way. Still, despite all the wires, and the extra $2,000 I had to spend on hardware just to run it — I absolutely loved it. Since then I’ve bought every single Oculus product, and I love each one even more.
When people would come to visit, it wouldn’t take long for me to have them wired up exploring virtual worlds. Introducing people to VR for the first time became was a truly magical experience. Back then I thought, in a few years this will become a mainstream product.
I was wrong.
Here we are, nine year later, and while Oculus has definitely come a long way since the DK2, we’re still far from mass adoption. In 2022 14.94 million VR and AR devices were shipped to consumers, with the bulk of those shipments being VR headsets. In 2023 this number is expected to grow to 23 million. (Source)
So while there’s definitely real growth, it’s a far cry from the 225 million iPhone shipped in 2022.
That being said, I don’t think the challenges VR has experienced are that mysterious. Currently the only core consumer use-case for VR is gaming. The challenge here is that most gamers already have a platform of choice, and it’s not VR or even fancy consoles like the PS5. Here’s the current breakdown of devices gamers use:
- 71% — Smartphones
- 64% — Computer
- 34% — Tablet
- 26% — Console
I’m guessing some people might be surprised to see that today more people play games on their Smartphones than on a Computer. What’s happened here is that Smartphones have actually created more gamers. The requirement of having a fancy gaming PC or a console designed only for gaming are gone — now the phone in your pocket does it all.
But people don’t buy a Smartphones for gaming — they game on Smartphones because they already have them.
This is why Spatial Computing is has so much potential.
I think VR has failed to see mass adoption not because it isn’t an incredibly cool immersive platform, but because it’s really a platform that has only really succeeded at one thing — VR gaming.
What makes Apple’s VisionPro (and the non-pro Vision devices that will undoubtedly follow) so different is that they’ve flipped the script. Now we’re looking at a headset device not meant for gaming, instead it’s geared towards all the other things you currently do on your iPhone and iPad like email, surfing the web, reading articles, posting to social media, texting, and making phone calls.
I think gaming will be a core part of the Vision experience in the future, but to start, Apple is focusing on where the market is —people with a Smartphone.
Of course, the first rev of the VisionPro probably isn’t for you, but Spatial Computing - a way to access everything you know and love on your iPhone today but in a much more visual immersive way, I’d say that’s for everyone.
