Asia Pacific AR/VR market for headsets grew by 60% in 2021

The Asia Pacific (including Japan and China) market for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets grew 60.8% year over year (YOY) in 2021, with shipments reaching 2.19 million units, according to new data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Quarterly AR/VR Headset Tracker, 4Q21. AR/VR shipments are expected to continue to grow at a healthy rate as contents become more enriched under the influence of new vendors/developers and more options of AR/VR headsets become available to the market.

“While the Asia/Pacific region benefited from Meta’s Quest 2, the bigger push was from brands such as DPVR, Pico, iQiyi, Nolo, etc.,” said Yexi Liao, Market Analyst for AR/VR and Gaming research, IDC Asia/Pacific. “Chinese brands contributed more than 60% of AR/VR headsets in the Asia Pacific region in 2021. Most of this was for the PRC market, but these companies are also expanding to the rest of the region and the world,” adds Liao.

2021 Top 5 Asia/Pacific AR/VR Headset company highlights:

• DPVR led the overall AR/VR headset market in the Asia/Pacific region, with close to 22% market share and shipment growth of 50.8% YoY. While most of the vendor’s shipments were for the PRC market, it continued to expand in the rest of the region, especially in markets such as Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
• Pico maintained the second position, with a market share of 20.0% and a growth of 50.4% YoY. Pico found large success in switching to the consumer segment with its new Neo 3, featuring 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF). Like DPVR, most of Pico’s shipments were for the PRC market, but the vendor also had a presence in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, as well as a strong focus in the NA and EMEA regions.
• Meta recorded the largest YoY growth among the Top 5 vendors at 276.2%. This is largely due to the Quest 2 that continued to ramp up throughout 2021 with high demand in mature markets such as Australia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
• iQiyi leapfrogged its way into fourth place in 2021 with a YoY growth of 206.4%. Higher investments in marketing coupled with its new consumer-specific models helped it gain strong momentum within the PRC market.
• HTC grew by 70.0% YoY. The vendor enjoyed substantial growth in 2021 thanks to its new models, the Vive Focus 3 and Vive Pro 2, which shipped at high volumes in the PRC market.

“With vendors pushing consumer-specific models and more quality content such as AAA games or assistant applications, consumer shipments should continue to grow in the long term. In the commercial sector, demand for education and training use cases will continue to lead the way, but more segments will start to explore AR/VR headsets as an option to help increase work efficiency, not to mention piggyback on the recent hype around the metaverse,” said Liao. “IDC expects that the Asia/Pacific AR/VR headset market should grow at a compounded growth rate of 51% in the next five years,” ends Liao.

CT Bureau