Lenovo just unveiled a $400 VR headset

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January 4, 2017 6:25 PM

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VR production

Lenovo announced that it has developed a $400 PC-powered virtual reality (VR) headset, according to Engadget.

It is the latest in a string of tech companies to announce a VR device, even as the technology struggles to reach the consumer market at large.

Lenovo’s new VR product aims to address several key issues in the way of mass consumer adoption of PC-powered devices:

Lenovo’s efforts to rectify these issues likely indicates that future iterations of VR headsets from other vendors will also address these concerns. This will help make the more powerful VR devices accessible to consumers, providing users with better, more immersive VR experiences. That should drive adoption of VR beyond early movers and push it into the greater consumer market. BI Intelligence expects that shipments of PC-powered headsets rose to 1.2 million in 2016, and will reach about 1.4 million in 2017. That compares with 250,000 in 2015. Shipments in this category will likely grow to 8.3 million in 2022, at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42%.

The virtual reality (VR) market made significant strides throughout 2016.

New VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive debuted amid great consumer anticipation, while VR content launches kept pace, with Batman: Arkham VR and Chair In A Room garnering encouraging download totals.

At the same time, industry groups and conferences brought developers, investors, and content producers together, helping to further ramp up buzz in this nascent space.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, forecasts shipments of VR headsets to spike by 1047% year-over-year (YoY) to 8.2 million in 2016.

Jessica Smith, research analyst for BI Intelligence, has compiled a detailed report on virtual reality that explores the highly fragmented and volatile VR market that emerged in 2016, lays out the future growth potential in numerous key VR hardware categories as driven by major VR platforms, and examines consumer sentiment and developer excitement for VR, presenting which headset categories and platforms are most poised for success in the near- to mid-term.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

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