Mark Zuckerberg has called mixed reality “the holy grail.”
One-fifth of its workforce (more than 10,000 employees) works in Facebook’s Reality Labs division. And when it comes to consumer virtual reality hardware, its Oculus line is the leader in the category: the extinct Nielsen gaming group, SuperData, projected that Oculus Quest 2 would account for 87% of all sales. of VR headsets in 2021.
The only problem?
According to a survey in the June 2021 Morning Brew-Harris survey, American consumers would prefer to buy AR / VR hardware from Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon or Microsoft before buying from FB. And it’s not particularly close:
Of these companies, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft work on AR / VR devices for consumers. Many other competitors also play, such as LG, PlayStation, Sony, HTC and Vuzix.
Facebook’s virtual reality headphones have a recognizable independent brand on Oculus, but the company has made a number of moves over the past year that indicate its desire for consumers to see the hardware as part of the FB family.
- Last August it was announced that Oculus users will need to have Facebook accounts in order to use the devices.
- The same month, the company changed its mixed reality division from Oculus to Facebook Reality Labs, but kept the Oculus brand as the product name.
If you carry Oculus more explicitly under the Facbook umbrella, you could go back. Consumers have shown a strong preference for an Apple AR / VR device over FB, with 35% designating Apple as their first choice, compared to only 5% for Facebook, according to our survey data. Morning Brew-Harris. And more general brand trust surveys consistently show that consumers trust Apple more.
A nightmare for FB? Apple CEO Tim Cook too it seems that AR and VR are the next big thing and your company is the favorite for future products in this space. If Apple can figure out how to send a good device (also known as … do what Apple does best), it could outperform Facebook’s Oculus.DM