SuperData: Facebook sold 180,000 Oculus Quests in Q3 2019

Back in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Oculus Connect 6 that the company was making Oculus Quest virtual reality headsets as fast as it could make them. But apparently Facebook isn’t able to make all that many of them.

Nielsen’s SuperData market research firm said that Oculus sold 180,000 units of the Oculus Quest in the third quarter ended September 30. Lifetime sales of the Quest, which is a wireless version of the Oculus headset, are now at 400,000 units. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not that many.

But players are buying a lot of games for VR headsets of all kinds. SuperData said that consumer VR software revenue is on track to generate more than $1 billion in revenues for the first time this year.

With the holidays around the corner, SuperData believes the Quest is poised for a strong holiday season as one for the most giftable VR headsets around. The device has the advantage of simplicity since it doesn’t need to be plugged into a PC. In addition, both the Oculus Go and PlayStation VR saw big jumps in quarterly sales volume during the first full holiday season on the market.

SuperData’s estimate for the annual 2019 consumer VR headsets revenue will be up 16% over 2018 earnings. Meanwhile, enterprise headset revenue is on track to jump 69% during the same period. Enterprise customers are rapidly adopting VR for purposes like employee training and automotive design.

According to SuperData, Valve Index’s first quarter on the market sold 46,000 units. While this was a smaller figure than the quarterly numbers of other major VR headsets, Valve’s device is designed to reach the most dedicated enthusiasts, given its price of up to $1,000.