If the $23 billion number is correct it's about 8-12% of the gaming market. Less market share (and less revenue) than 3D TVs had in its heyday (about 12 years ago). Yet you can't even get a new 3D TV today. So just having a big number doesn't mean anything for the future.
Statista has about 11 million sold VR headsets sold last year. That's not mainstream, that's a niche.
I dont want to argue semantics, but a broad statement like this implies that all units sold are still in service.
These things follow a curve, for laptops theres steep drop offs at 3, 5 and 8 years.
98% of 3 year old devices
60% of 5 year old devices
5% of 8y old devices.
So you’d need to apply a sliding scale.
Macbooks feel pretty ubiquitous, you cant use the entire 33y run of Macbooks to imply that the demographic is an order of magnitude more than what the parent implied.
Not semantics, but if you think of examples of at least pop culture that we think of as being in the mainstream, it's about staying power of the genre. For example let's take Rock 'n Roll.
When it really became popular -- say Elvis gyrating those hips -- he alone sold 10 million records in a year. And critics then talked of it as a fad that would die out. Elvis would continue to record, continue to sell millions, but eventually - well he died, but rock 'n roll the idea, the genre lived on. In fact rock 'n roll songs were written about how it will always rock 'n roll in defience of the "fad" label.
And ~fifty/sixty years later, there are still rock 'n roll bands selling millions/records/year. Not Elvis but the genre remains. We can't quite compare records sales now anymore because physical media just isn't sold really anymore.
That "staying power" isn't something VR headsets have (yet). Laptops have that. Critics say that VR is a fad and I think that's more what they mean. They say more critical things as well, but that's sort of the gist.
Another example is the automobile:
“[Motor cars] have the appearance of a fad, and an extremely dirty, dusty, inconvenient fad… These crude impracticable machines are unlikely for many years to displace in the Englishman’s affection a fine trotting horse and a smart trap.” -- Anonymous Horserider
It's too soon to tell with VR headsets, but their limited capability, high price, and well: relative usefulessness seems not in their favor.
The (alleged) quote about cars being a fad dates to 1901. A similar quote from a banker rejecting investment in Ford Motor Company is from 1903, before the first Model A was produced. I guess we're much farther along in the development of VR headsets than that. In any case, there might have been grumblers, but history shows that as soon cheap and reliable cars where available, they sold like crazy.
There will be always grumblers but they also often point out fads correctly. 3D TVs are a good example, I think. Or quadrophonic records.
...and that's just one product in one category of one vendor. Not a comparison to the whole vr market that is half the size as that one product.
Also, yeah, Apple is kind of niche in computer sales. Maybe not in very affluent parts of the US but globally less than 10% in desktop and notebooks each.
Also also - VR might be a growing niche. I'm not arguing that. Hype's over but apparently there is still growth.
MacBooks are basically their own category. Since you can't really install osx on other hardware. An MacBook and a laptop are not interchangable for many people. You could as well say VR gaming and gaming are the same category but that distinction matters as much as MacBooks non-MacBooks.
