Samsung confirms 5+ million Gear VR headsets are now in use worldwide, announced at their CES 2017 keynote. The Gear VR headset launched in November 2015, and was the first high-quality VR solution for smartphones.
In his opening speech at CES 2017 this week, Samsung Electronics America president Tim Baxter announced that the company now has “more than 5 million” Gear VR virtual reality headsets in use. Designed in partnership with Oculus, the Gear VR hardware platform delivered the first high-quality mobile VR solution back in November 2015 (beating the consumer version of the Oculus Rift to market) and has only recently received notable competition in the form of Google’s Daydream platform.
Baxter also highlighted the success of Samsung’s Gear 360 camera, which ‘empowers people to create their own 360 videos and images’, and revealed that consumers have viewed over 10 million hours of video in VR.
In a wide-ranging keynote that covered Samsung’s major products, services and partnerships for 2017, including Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), Quantum Dot TVs, home appliances, and wearables, this brief mention of existing ‘Gear’ products was the only reference to VR in the entire presentation.
There was no sign of their standalone VR headset, which was confirmed to exist at the Samsung Developer Conference 2016, however its rumoured ‘Odyssey’ name did appear in the reveal of the company’s very first gaming laptop range, called the Notebook Odyssey. While GPU specs for the 17-inch version have not been finalised, it is likely to be VR-capable. This marks the beginning of a new line of Odyssey-branded gaming products, so there is still potential for an Odyssey VR headset.
The full Samsung press conference can be watched here.
