Meta Quest 2 & 3: Early signs of holiday sales growth
UPDATEThe market research company Omdia provides a more detailed analysis of the Meta Quest app downloads and App Store ranking.
How well did Meta Quest do this Christmas? I've collected the first indicators that are circulating online.
Meta Quest 2 was very popular in the 2021 holiday season, and there were signs of good sales in 2022, too. But what about 2023?
The price of Quest 2 was reduced to 250 US dollars before Christmas and the Quest 3, which was released in October and cost twice as much, delighted enthusiasts.
In November, Amazon sales figures suggested that Quest 2 was selling about twice as well as Quest 3 - a respectable ratio given the price difference. And during UK's Black Friday, VR had its strongest revenue week yet.
I have collected several other indicators of sales success that relate to Christmas.
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Top free app on the US App Store
As in previous years, the iOS app Meta Quest made it to the top of the most downloaded free apps in the App Store for Christmas and stayed there for several days. The Meta Quest app must be installed on the smartphone before the Quest can be used.
Wishing everyone another merry VR funeral! pic.twitter.com/X0HLEQPvVn
- Luna (@Lunayian) December 25, 2023
Popular VR travel app sees huge influx of new users
Since the launch of Meta Quest 3, Brink Traveler has seen a fourfold increase in new daily users, and this success increased tenfold over Christmas. The user spike was even bigger than last Christmas, writes developer Akin Bilgic on Twitter.
Fresh stats for the #VR debates!
With the #MetaQuest3 launch, @BrinkXR saw a sustained ~4x increase in daily new users overnight.
Christmas day brought a ~10x spike on top of that new baseline, which was much bigger than last Christmas while also having a bigger lead-up.?(1/3) pic.twitter.com/16WYnqwHQ7
- Akin Bilgic | BRINK Traveler (@AkinBilgic) December 27, 2023
Gorilla Tag breaks user record
The currently most played VR game reached more than 90,000 concurrent users over Christmas, 2.5 times more than before. It is unclear if this statistic includes the PC VR version. However, most of them are probably playing Meta Quest.
The Christmas effect has spiked Gorilla Tag concurrent players to more than 2.5x pic.twitter.com/en3ot5Qk4R
- Ben Lang (@benz145) December 27, 2023
SteamVR: Meta Quest 3 is breaks into the PC VR headset charts
In December 2023, Meta Quest 3 was the 4th most used SteamVR headset, just behind the Oculus Rift S. Its share increased by 5% in November and by 4% in December. The SteamVR stats only include headsets used on a PC and with Steam, which is a small fraction of the headsets in circulation.
Quest 3 exclusive app has at least 400,000 users
Twitter user JustDaven pointed out with a screenshot that more than 400,000 users have tried Meta's mixed reality demo First Encounters. The app does not launch automatically. Depending on how many users actually tried the app, the actual number of users could be higher.
Assuming like 90% of Quest 3 owners have played First Encounters, could be close to 450k Quest 3's total out in the wild / consumer market already
If its more like 50% have tried this (the only Quest 3 exclusive) then Quest 3 might be near 1m units already? pic.twitter.com/H6JKBuJVui
- JustDaven (@JayHadHope) January 2, 2024
Further clues
The subreddits /oculus and /oculusquest also saw an increase in subscriber numbers at Christmas, albeit a bit less than in previous years.
Meta's next quarterly report, expected in late January or early February, will provide a more concrete assessment of sales success compared to previous years as Meta breaks out Meta Reality Labs revenue for every quarter.
Update: Omdia Analysis
George Jijiashvili of research firm Omdia provides a deeper analysis of the current development of the Quest platform via Linkedin. He takes a closer look at app downloads and Amazon sales figures.
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