Profitable VR Sector
Samsung Electronics Co. already makes profit in the Virtual Reality (VR) sector which is considered its next growth engine. Also, sales of VR devices help boost sales of the Galaxy S7 smartphone.
According to industry sources on Apr. 27, Mihai Pohontu, vice president of emerging platforms at Samsung Electronics, recently said, “VR already is a profitable market for Samsung. It also help increasing the sales of not only VR devices, like the Gear VR, but also smartphones, such as Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.”
He added, “Samsung should continue to invest heavily in VR and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, products and services in the future. There will be a considerable change in various areas, including the gaming industry, in the future.”
In fact, Samsung Electronics is strengthening the cooperation in VR with global companies to expand contents. At the recent game developer conference, Microsoft said Minecraft will be compatible with Samsung Electronics’ Gear VR. Moreover, Oculus, a subsidiary of Facebook, also produced an app which can be used with Samsung's VR headset, allowing users to create a virtual room and enjoy. Samsung Electronics has recently set up a Gear VR Adventure room at Everland, making an effort to popularize VR devices.
Experts predicts that the VR market will grow explosively in the future. A market research firm Digi-Capital said the VR market will grow from US$4 billion (4.6 trillion won) this year to US$150 billion (172.35 trillion won) in 2020. Another market research company IDC said VR-related hardware market will increase by 10 times from 10 million units this year to 111 million units in 2020.
Market watchers expect that Samsung Electronics will announce the plans to invest in low-end VR devices, which will popularize the market, at the Samsung Developer Conference (SDC) 2016 in San Francisco, the U.S., on Apr. 27 (local time).