Wagner James Au / New World Notes

The numbers from Nielsen analytics company SuperData seem to welcome us to VR's winter season:

The growth outlook for augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) headsets has been revised downward due to Q2 setbacks for consumer AR/MR. We now estimate that AR/MR headsets will only account for 23% of XR revenue by 2023, down from a prior projection of 36%. Magic Leap experienced mass layoffs after it failed to appeal to consumers or developers of consumer software. The company has now pivoted to focus on enterprise customers. Similarly, smartglasses maker North was acquired by Google, reportedly for less than the firm had raised in venture funding. There are reports Apple is testing AR devices, and a product from the company will certainly grow the consumer AR market overnight. However, we believe a consumer AR headset from Apple will not arrive until 2022 at the earliest and will take some time to reach true mainstream adoption. 

More here. While SuperData also reports that the Quest outsold the PSVR in Q2 2020 (the second quarter since Q4 2019 that this has happened), the Quest install base remains surprisingly now:

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Earlier this year when the pandemic hit for the first time, my family and I were fairly well-prepared, in the sense that we had a huge supply of sanitary wipes on hand, even when store shelves had been completely wiped out of every bacteria-killing product.

Why? Because late last year, I had been spending quite awhile doing VR demos. Which basically means wiping down the equipment with sanitary wipes, every time another person steps up to give your VR product a try.

It's really the paradox of virtual reality: Convincing people it's a powerful technology means spending quite a lot of time physically touching them in real life. "Eye condoms" like the one here — popular at VR conferences, often handed out right at the entrance — are a laughably thin level of sanitary protection. They might help prevent infection from bacteria on the VR headset, but you're still in close contact with one or more strangers throughout a typical VR demo, sharing the controllers, holding and positioning people around so they're tracked properly, often literally holding hands with them, so you can make sure they're properly clicking the proper controls. 

I thought about all this after Upload VR's Ian Hamilton made a very astute point:

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