Virtual reality hasn’t caught on with American teens, according to a new survey from Piper Sandler released on Tuesday.

While 29 percent percent of teens polled owned a VR device — versus 87% who own iPhones — only 4 percent of headset owners used it daily, and just 14 percent used them weekly.

Teenagers also didn’t seem that interested in buying forthcoming VR headsets either. Only 7 percent said they planned to purchase a headset, versus 52 percent of teens polled who were unsure or uninterested.

That’s not the only bad news for VR that’s come out recently.

Bloomberg has reported that Sony’s new PlayStation VR2 Headset is projected to sell 270,000 units as of the end of March, based on data from IDC. It had originally planned to sell 2 million units in the same time period, Bloomberg reported last fall.

In fact, VR headset numbers in general are down.

According to IDC, headset shipments declined 21 percent last year to 8.8 million units.

“This survey only further exemplifies that the current state of VR is very business-focused,” said Rolf Illenberger, managing director of VRdirect, a company that provides enterprise software solutions for the metaverse and virtual reality.

“The pandemic further accelerated progress for VR and AR usability in the office, while the release of new devices will mean more for developers building practical use cases than they will for teenagers seeking entertainment,” he told Hypergrid Business.

source: https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2023/04/teens-slow-to-adopt-vr-and-more-bad-news-for-the-metaverse/

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