From Wareable:
Will VR ever be mainstream? Samsung, which has had one of the biggest VR hardware hits so far with the Gear VR, still doesn't know if or when.
Young Sohn, Samsung's president and chief strategy officer, told an event in San Francisco: "Is hype or mainstream? I don't have an answer." He also said that Samsung is holding off on the launch of its confirmed high end standalone VR headset to match the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive until it's clear that these types of devices will be widely adopted.
Sohn described the VR headset game as having a "chicken and egg problem right now" - to take VR mainstream we need great, affordable headsets but some companies don't want to spend on R&D for headsets until they know it will be mainstream.Honestly, I'd entirely forgotten that Gear VR had even happened, let alone that Samsung was developing a standalone version of the thing. Among the other tidbits in the article: the Rift and Vive are estimated to have sold only 100K units or so each, compared to the Gear VR (Galaxy Note smartphone not included) which has moved about a million units.
When the company with the best-selling VR "headset" is wanting to wait before selling a standalone version, thus competing directly with the Rift, Vive, and PS4 headsets... well, maybe the rest of the tech media world can press pause on the VR hype flow, too. Not that I expect them to, of course, but we can dream.