During a conference call with investors on Wednesday, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg talked about the success of Oculus Quest.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces the crowd at the F8 annual developer conference in the past. Photo: Facebook

Zuckerberg stated that virtual reality had “reached a milestone” even though augmented reality is still years away. According to the Facebook CEO, the milestone saw its standalone Oculus Quest virtual reality headset performing “stronger than expected” in sales so far. Buyers were buying and using more content than Facebook had previously assumed.

Zuckerberg talked of the company’s long-term bets in technologies such as augmented reality. On Quest performance, he announced that on Christmas Day alone, customers splurged more than $5 million on Oculus Quest content from Oculus Store. The Christmas Day sales performance corresponds to the sales of Quest software during its first two weeks market launch and approximately one twentieth of all the previous Oculus Store revenue including for Oculus Rift and Oculus Go. Zuckerberg said this result was an indication of the progress that the ecosystem was making. It is clear Quest had roaring Christmas sales.

Facebook Still Investing Heavily in AR and VR

For augmented reality, Facebook is currently working on “long-term hardware including operating system”. However, Facebook has already laid the groundwork and is well-positioned even today. Its Spark AR is said to be the most widely-used augmented reality platform in the world with hundreds of millions of users. The Spark AR platform is expected to expand even further.

Facebook’s research and development spending rose 36% year over year, according to Facebook CFO Dave Wehner. This increase in cost was attributed mainly to the larger investments in the core product and innovations, especially augmented reality and virtual reality.

Other revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019, outside of advertising, was $346 million. This was 26% more than that of the previous year. This growth in other revenue sources was driven mainly by Oculus Quest.

Facebook did not mention any specific sales figures. XR Market researchers, SuperData Research, estimates that Facebook sold 317,000 Oculus Quest units in the fourth quarter of 2019. According to SuperData Research, some 700,000 units of the standalone Oculus Quest headset have been sold since its launch in May last year.

Read more on Facebook Q4 2019 earnings.

https://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/f8_day1keynote-600x359.jpghttps://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/f8_day1keynote-150x90.jpgSam OchanjiBusinessOculusDuring a conference call with investors on Wednesday, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg talked about the success of Oculus Quest. Zuckerberg stated that virtual reality had “reached a milestone” even though augmented reality is still years away. According to the Facebook CEO, the milestone saw its standalone Oculus Quest virtual reality...VR, Oculus Rift, and Metaverse News - Cryptocurrency, Adult, Sex, Porn, XXX