VR and Smart Glasses Face Weak Consumer Demand

VR and smart glasses face a demand and product-market-fit problem despite years of promotion, demonstrations and pop-up experiences. Consumers are described as showing little interest in trying or buying the devices, and adoption is expected to be slow.

By contrast, the GPT-3 API became available in 2020 after years of research, while ChatGPT went broadly viral once it was usable. The comparison suggests that strong marketing has not created the same spontaneous demand for face-worn computing.

The analysis suggests these devices may need to become roughly ten times better before a substantial market emerges. It remains uncertain whether the eventual market will be as large or exciting as industry leaders expect; ambient computing could instead arrive through devices that are not worn on the face.