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> Smartphones were already selling 47 million units in 2010. The bet isn't that the Quest or any extant VR headset _is_ the iPhone, the bet is that some succes
by wcarss 4y ago
> Smartphones were already selling 47 million units in 2010.
The bet isn't that the Quest or any extant VR headset _is_ the iPhone, the bet is that some successor of the Oculus could be the iPhone. Facebook is hoping they can either capitalize on it directly or hold the patents to skim the cream off of whomever does.
The current headsets are more like PalmOS -- pretty cool, but not yet cool enough. They're for geeks and enthusiasts. If my silly analogy holds, we're currently waiting for Nokia and Blackberry to show up and miss (but make a lot of progress along the way), and then we'll get an iPhone around ~2028, and the bet might pay off.
- lumost 4y agoSo Facebook drops billions per year to be palm pilot? What incentive does anyone have in this org to deliver an actual product/customer value? How do we know VR isn’t a bet for the 2030s? If this was a small labs net spending a few million a year… then I’d buy this, but we’re looking at a bet the farm situation.
- moolcool 4y agoI will die on the hill that PalmOS was primarily a marketing failure. They were always primarily thought of basic personal organizer devices, but the Palm Tungsten and Zire lines (Starting around 2003) had very strong multimedia and gaming functionality.