Research suggests the VR headset heyday could be behind us

By Monica J. White Published March 19, 2025

The latest market research has not been kind to VR headsets, and the Apple Vision Pro is the headset that suffered the biggest drop in market share. According to a new market update, the global VR market declined by 12% year-over-year in 2024, showing that the adoption of these headsets is slowing instead of picking up pace.

The updates come from Counterpoint, a research firm. According to its latest findings, people just aren’t that into VR headsets anymore. Despite the way the tech has evolved in the last few years, shipments of VR headsets are dropping instead of rising.

It’s worth noting that shipments don’t directly translate to sales. We don’t know how many headsets have actually been sold, but what we do know is that retailers seemingly had no need for frequent restocks, hence the drop in shipments — and that points to declining sales, too, but those numbers are hardly ever made available to the public.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dig in. The global VR headset shipments fell by 12% year-over-year, and this is the third consecutive year of declines. Comparing the final quarter of 2024 to the final quarter of 2023 also revealed a 5% drop. Counterpoint cites hardware limitations and the fact that there’s just not enough exciting VR content readily available as some of the reasons why the market is in decline. The company notes that the enterprise market is doing better, although it hasn’t shared any numbers on that.

Meta, with headsets such as the Quest 3S, dominates the VR headset market, achieving a share of 77% in 2024. That share was even better in the fourth quarter of the year, when Meta headsets accounted for 84% of the market.

While Meta is soaring, the Apple Vision Pro is struggling to gain market share. The shipments of Apple’s flagship headset dropped by 43% quarter-over-quarter, indicating that many people might not be willing to spend over $3,500 on a VR headset.