Monthly Active Quest 2 Users Have Now Surpassed Those of Original Quest
In a sign of how rapidly the new Quest 2 headset has sold off, the number of monthly active users on the new headset has now surpassed that of the original Quest.
Facebook Reality Labs boss Andrew Bosworth did a blogpost looking back at 2020 and revealed the new milestone in user numbers which has come shortly after its October 13th launch.
Bosworth revealed that 2020 was a good year for Facebook’s virtual reality business in spite of the pandemic and the resulting touch social distancing and lockdown measures.
It was a “tremendous year” for virtual reality and the Quest 2 headset was Facebook’s fastest-growing VR headset. The growth, Bosworth stated, was driven by a “convergence of leading VR form factors” as well as by the content that has been built by Facebook’s developer community.
While the Bosworth blogpost does not provide any concrete figures, he revealed that the Quest 2 headset had “surpassed the original Quest’s monthly active users in less than 7 weeks,” which is impressive growth and a testament that the hype surrounding the release of the headset translated into real demand and orders for the headset.
According to Facebook, this milestone was derived from the concurrent measurements between its two standalone headsets. The Quest 2 headset also surpassed the monthly active users for the ‘Quest 1’ headset which has been around for more than a year.
The original Oculus Quest headset generated $150 million in revenues from apps and games sales over the period between its launch in late 2019 and just before the release of the Oculus Quest 2 headset. With its reported success coming in just a few weeks, it will be interesting to see how much revenues Quest 2 will generate over the same time duration.
Bosworth also revealed that according to the overall percentage, more women are now using the Oculus Quest 2 headset than any of Facebook’s previous headsets.
These revelations shouldn’t be a surprise. Shortly after the release of the Quest 2 headset, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had reported that the new standalone headset had generated five times as many pre-orders over the original Quest so the Quest 2 headset was always well-positioned to break usage records and eventually, we most certainly should see revenue records being broken, too.
That said, this has always been a captured market and the stay-at-home orders have affected many people but according to Bosworth, Facebook will also focus on offering work-from-home solutions that will help bridge these gaps.
With Facebook launching its social immersive VR experience this year with the Facebook Horizon and with the office concept evolving, particularly in light of the social distancing measures, Bosworth says Facebook is building out its capacity for “meaningful social presence in virtual work spaces.”
It’s too early to predict what Facebook will be up to this year beyond the release of Facebook Horizon for regular users. With its Project Aria research, Facebook will eventually release its Augmented Reality glasses which will be sensor-rich pair of glasses that the tech giant plans to use in training its AR perception systems and in assessing public perception of the technology. However, these AR glasses are definitely not coming any time soon but it will be interesting to see what the tech giant will be up to this year on the immersive front.
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