Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

How Many Consumers Actually Have VR Headsets?

Parks Associates released new consumer research this week showing that 2 percent of U.S. broadband households, or 2.3 million households, own a virtual reality headset. The survey of 10,000 U.S. broadband households reportedly reveals that 5 percent of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a VR headset in 2016, an increase from only 1 percent who made a purchase the year prior.

“The big change in VR for 2016 has been the availability or pending availability of VR headsets from companies such as Facebook (Oculus Rift), Google (Google Cardboard) and HTC (Vive). Sony PlayStation VR is expected to be released in October. We expect gamers to be the initial market for VR,” Barbara Kraus, Parks Associates director of research, says. “VR is an immersive experience, and more is better for gamers – more immersion, better sound, better graphics, and more players. The mass market is more likely to adopt mobile VR, which will be less expensive and uses a tool – the smartphone – that the majority of U.S. consumers own.”

From the article "How Many Consumers Actually Have VR Headsets?" by Laura Hamilton.

Previously In The News

Spanish Viewers Prefer Online Video To Pay TV: Study

“First-time adoption of pay TV is up among Spanish broadband households as is the penetration of pay TV overall. The Spanish pay-TV market in general has a very active, cost-conscious base of subscrib...

More Americans now pay for streaming video content than cable television, survey finds

Netflix is also preparing to crackdown on illegal account sharing via new artificial intelligence software, which will be able to analyze which users are logged in and then flag shared accounts. Th...

Weekly Music Publishing Update 2.17.17: Chance The Rapper, Amazon, Anghami, Streaming Partnership & More

According to a report published by Parks Associates, there is a dark horse in the streaming market: Amazon Prime Music. The company's senior analyst says, "Nearly one-half of streaming music subscribe...

Amazon Prime Music Still ‘Most Popular’ US Subscription Service

Unsurprisingly, Amazon has never announced a specific figure for Prime Music listeners, although the company’s digital music boss Steve Boom said last year that “Prime Music has several million people...