Bad Luck Zuck: Metaverse Facing Uphill Battle as VR Headset Sales Shrink in 2022

Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse may be facing a troubling future after worldwide shipments of VR headsets and augmented reality (AR) devices dropped more than 12 percent to 9.6 million in 2022.

CNBC reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s big bet on Facebook’s virtual reality could be in trouble as the VR industry appears to be facing troubles. According to the research firm NPD Group, virtual reality headset sales in the United States declined by two percent from the previous year, reaching $1.1 billion as of early December.

This figure is noteworthy as it is roughly equivalent to the amount of revenue generated by Facebook’s advertising business in just three days. As the ad industry faces a downturn, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been looking to virtual and augmented reality technology to drive the company’s future growth.

However, data from analyst firm CCS Insight shows that worldwide shipments of VR and AR devices fell by more than 12 percent year-over-year to 9.6 million in 2022. These declining sales figures indicate that the VR and AR market may not be as promising a growth area as Zuckerberg had hoped.

The combined data on VR headset sales and shipments paint a concerning picture for Meta, a company whose stock price has dropped by about two-thirds this year. Zuckerberg has stated that he is taking a long-term approach with the metaverse, anticipating that it will take up to a decade for it to become mainstream and projecting that it will eventually facilitate hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce.

However, the current market trends for VR and AR devices suggest that achieving these goals may be more difficult than Zuckerberg and Facebook (now known as Meta) has anticipated.

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan