Virtual reality, or VR, was a major technology trend in 2016. In fact, I and several colleagues in our customer service shop attended a VR fair. And that was early this past summer. Thousands attended. Consequently, Samsung VR leads the pack, but competitors are catching up.
At the CES conference in Las Vegas, Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, made an announcement. Mr. Baxter said Samsung sold five million Samsung VR Galaxy headsets. Also, these headsets are for mobile devices. So if you have a mobile device, which many Americans do, you can use Samsung VR. But wait…there’s more. Baxter said Samsung VR customers viewed over 10 million hours of VR. Furthermore, they upload even more hours of video through Gear 360 camera. So the VR craze isn’t going anywhere. That’s good news for software makers, good news for Samsung, and good news for Samsung VR customers.
But Samsung isn’t the only one capitalizing off the VR craze. Ever hear of Pico Technology? Their headquarters are in China. They’re coming out with the Pico Neo CV. They’re lightweight and customers can use them out of the box. They use Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processors and Qualcomm Snapdragon VR software. They also have built in HI-FI speakers. A Pico executive demonstrated them at the CES conference. They should be out this year, so we don’t know what the price is.
But I want to focus on Samsung. They had a hard 2016. In fact, I’ll say Samsung VR will be the saving grace of Samsung this year. It had better be. Samsung needs to hit the year 2017 out of the park. And the virtual reality craze could do just that. But you know competitors are watching. Do you think it was a coincidence Pico announced their VR sets at the CES conference? It’s only one of the most popular conferences for those in IT service. I also hear others are building VR headsets. So yes, Samsung desperately needs to invest in VR technology. But will other tech companies prevail?