Major mobile players like HTC and Samsung have already taken a dive into the virtual reality ocean — and now Lenovo thinks the water is just right for swimming.
The computing giant recently ran a promotional sales event for a bundle combining the Lenovo K4 Note (a mid-range model only available in India) with an ANTVR headset, akin to Samsung’s Gear VR. Lenovo started a flash sale for the bundle in India and almost half a million people (480,566 if you’re pedantic about numbers) registered for the event.
The bundle was limited to 10,000 units, which may have hindered its success. But what’s most impressive about this feat is that it sold out in 0.9 seconds. Lenovo barely had time to reflect on how it felt when the sale started.
This smashing success isn’t exclusive to Lenovo’s venture either. Oculus VR finally opened up for pre-orders of its Oculus Rift VR headset earlier this month. In a recent interview, Palmer Luckey — the company’s CEO and chief instigator of the virtual reality movement — said “I can’t talk about numbers, but we sold through in 10 minutes what I thought we were going to sell through in a few hours, which is one of the reasons the site was beginning to buckle.”
Samsung’s consumer version of the Gear VR also enjoyed a grand success upon its release. Both Best Buy and Amazon reported that the headset had sold out within 24 hours of its release. Sure, it was still available from Samsung’s own page, but that’s not an average consumer’s shopping platform. You’re more likely to shop for phones in your local electronics store than go all the way to China and get it straight from the factory, after all.
The beginning of 2016 is providing a powerful and quick launch for virtual reality as a whole. HTC is expecting non-mobile platforms to provide for ten percent of its total revenue this year as well, and you can trust that the VR headset HTC Vive is accounted for in those expectations.
