Specifically, in the first half of the year, omni-channel sales of VR equipment were 151,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 41%. This shows that the VR market is facing the dual pressure of destocking and declining consumer interest after experiencing a period of rapid growth.
In the online market, the performance of XR devices is also slightly weak. Data shows that in the first half of 2024, the sales of XR devices in the online public retail market (excluding Douyin, Kuaishou and other content e-commerce platforms) accounted for 43.4% of all channels, with sales of 115,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6%; sales were 350 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 20.5%. It is worth noting that the share of VR equipment in China’s overall XR online market is gradually being surpassed by AR equipment. In the first half of the year, the online sales of VR equipment accounted for 44.5%, compared with 69.4% in the same period last year.
The report believes that the downturn in the VR market in the first half of the year is related to multiple factors. On the one hand, VR products are still in the clearance stage of destocking, the pace of new product releases has slowed down, and consumers are not willing to buy. On the other hand, the market performance of high-end products such as Apple Vision Pro, which have high hopes, has not met expectations and has not been able to effectively boost market confidence. In addition, XR products still face challenges in terms of interaction friendliness, wearing comfort and rich content ecology, which limits further expansion of the market.
In contrast, the AR device market is growing rapidly. The report shows that the mainstream AR glasses currently on the market are mainly divided into two types: split and one-piece. Among them, split AR glasses dominate the market, accounting for 80.7% of sales. At the same time, AR devices using Micro LED screen + optical waveguide solutions are gradually favored by the market, accounting for 13.3% of the overall market share.
The report stated that compared with personal computers and mobile phones, AR glasses themselves cover visual and auditory characteristics and are more suitable for voice dialogue interaction. They have natural advantages as a carrier of AI; the large AI model can improve the natural language processing capabilities of AR glasses, allowing the latter to achieve more accurate semantic understanding and more efficient command recognition. On the basis of improving the device interaction experience, the application of AI also expands AR application scenarios, such as real-time translation, navigation, video photography, etc. AI+AR will accelerate the transformation of smart glasses from audio-visual entertainment equipment to advanced equipment with smartphone functions.
ANNA