China’s second largest e-commerce platform JD.com announced the results of its June 18 anniversary sale in Beijing last Sunday. Sales of virtual reality (VR) headsets saw no less than a 234-fold increase.
According to a report by the Chinese tech news website it.sohu.com on Wednesday, around 150 thousand VR headsets were sold from January to May 2016, a 234-fold increase from the 600 sold during the same period of 2015.
The report said that the hot VR brands included Baofeng Mojing, HTC Vive and ANTVR. Most of the users were 18 to 25 year old students and white-collar workers in first tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. In general, this demographic predominantly is using these VR headsets to watch films and television.
The VR headsets connected to smartphones, the so-called smartphone boxes, have been favored by the Chinese market. JD.com’s conclusion, based on its user feedback, confirmed this: the lower the price of the VR headset, the more accessible it is to average consumers. The lower prices of the smartphone boxes allowed more people to try out the VR experience; by contrast, the cost of VR devices with head mounted displays is still too high for many consumers.
According to a report by the American market research firm IDC in April, worldwide shipments of VR hardware will reach 9.6 million in 2016.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
