Meta’s Quest 2 has sold 14.8 million units since launch, IDC estimates.
IDC (International Data Corporation) is an analyst firm selling reports detailing its estimates of market size, market share, and unit sales of popular products. Analysts tend to use sources in the supply chain, though their accuracy can vary wildly, especially for lower volume products.
IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo wrote on Twitter that with almost 15 million units sold (after 20 months on the market) Quest 2 is “the most successful VR headset to date”. He further claimed VR sales grew 97% last year, and 242% in the first quarter of this year.
For comparison, PlayStation 5 has officially sold 20 million units, and estimates put Xbox Series X & S together at over 14 million. Yes, if these estimates are correct, Quest 2 has sold more units than the new Xbox consoles.
.@MetaQuestVR OculusQuest2 is the most successful #VR headset to date. With nearly 15mn units sold since its announcement at @facebook Connect 7 in Sep 2020, the Quest2 has contributed to massive growth in VR sales & consumer adoption
VR Sales grew 97% in 2021 & 242% in 1Q22 pic.twitter.com/7dIe42FSo7
— Francisco Jeronimo (He/Him) (@fjeronimo) June 6, 2022
So, are these estimates accurate? Meta doesn’t officially reveal hardware sales figures, but there have been clues to Quest 2’s success in the past.
In March 2021 now-CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed Quest 2 “outsold not just its predecessor, but all of its predecessors combined”. A product recall in July 2021 showed 4 million Quest 2 facial interfaces had been sold in the USA, both separately and included with the headset.
Most directly, the CEO of Qualcomm – the company behind the Snapdragon XR2 chip powering Quest 2 – said in November “Quest 2 was 10 million units”. A Qualcomm spokesperson backtracked on that statement saying it was “an average of third-party market size estimates” – but this could simply be a statement to save face with Meta given their relationship on Quest 2.
If Quest 2 really did reach 10 million in November, 13 months on the market, it seems reasonable that after 20 months it could now be at 14.8 million.
A word of caution however: Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has been critical of analyst estimates of VR sales in the past. “What I can say is that analysts in general are terrible”, he wrote in 2019. However, Luckey’s criticism has mainly been aimed at IDC’s competitor, SuperData.
