Data Point of the Week is ARtillry’s weekly dive into data from around the XR universe. Spanning usage and market-sizing data, it’s meant to draw insights for XR players, or would-be entrants. To see an indexed archive of data briefs and slide bank, subscribe to ARtillry Pro. 

The Oculus Go will accelerate mainstream VR adoption.. This will happen mostly through the device’s loss-leader pricing that Facebook has the luxury of applying, and a rich content library already in place from Gear VR. And the device itself is pretty solid in terms of specs.

But how many will Oculus sell in 2018? New data from Superdata projects a rather aggressive 1.8 million units. The remainder of the year will have to prove that out, including the holiday season which we believe will be a “moment of truth” for the device. $199 is a highly “giftable” price point.

Meanwhile Canalys likewise projects high sales for the device, but its numbers come in a bit lower than Superdata. The firm projects that a total of 1.5 million units will ship this year for all standalone VR headsets. The emerging category also includes the Lenovo Mirage and Vive Focus.

ARtillry Intelligence data also project the Oculus Go’s 2018 shipments a bit lower than Superdata. Our numbers peg Go’s 2018 sales at about 1.3 million units. We project this to grow to 8.7 million in 2022, which will position it as the market share leader for unit headset shipments.

These figures are part of ARtillry’s twice-annual Global XR forecast that will be released later this week (the last installment is here). Regardless of whose numbers you believe, most market watchers expect big things for Oculus Go. We’ll be watching how sales track to these projections.

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Disclosure: ARtillry has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this post, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.

Header image credit: Oculus