Occulus sales show a promising future for VR and the Metaverse.

Oculus Sets Sales Records as Consumers Upgrade Systems during Holiday Season

Maybe he is the luckiest guy in the high-tech industry, or maybe he is the smartest, it’s hard to pinpoint which. Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook/Meta has faced a lot of challenges in recent years. He even went so far as to change the name of his corporation to Meta. And once again it looks like the Facebook king has struck gold.

If you are a virtual reality fan already, then this news from geekwire.com won’t impress you much. Oculus is the name of Zuckerberg’s VR headset and mobile app. And it appears this is the year that VR tech really takes off, just when the company’s engineers come up with what they call the Metaverse. The combination of multiple elements of technology, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and video allows users to “live” within a digital universe.

New installations of the Oculus mobile app jumped more than 150% over the Christmas weekend compared to last year, according to numbers released Tuesday morning by Apptopia.

In other words, there were a lot of VR headsets under the tree this year. Oculus app installations approached 650,000 globally from Dec. 24 to 26, up from 255,000 the year before, according to data from the real-time competitive intelligence platform.

And you cant get in the Metaverse without one of several mobile apps and VR headsets. The tech has finally caught up with the hopes and expectations of the players and engineers.

Earlier reports noted that the Oculus app had jumped to the top of the charts on Apple’s iOS. At a starting price of $300, the Oculus Meta Quest 2 appears to be doing more than its part to bring virtual reality into the mainstream.

VR is a gateway to Meta’s larger vision for the Metaverse, as outlined by CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year. The big numbers suggest that the controversy swirling around Facebook in recent months might not ultimately hold the company back in its efforts to pursue the Metaverse next phase in its evolution.

And maybe that name change was a smart move, after all.

read more at geekwire.com