ByteDance, owners of the popular social media platform TikTok, have recently acquired Pico Interactive for a reported sum of $755 million. Pico Interactive is best known for its standalone 6dof headset the Pico Neo 3, a competitor to the Oculus Quest 2 exclusive to China.
Facebook has enjoyed great success with the Oculus buyout having overtaken a large chunk of the VR market with the Oculus Quest 2. However in China, because of its connection to Facebook services, the Quest 2 has not sold in the country. This has allowed competitors such as Pico Interactive to fill the void with their own variant of the Quest 2 hardware.
TikTok, a rising superpower in the social media sphere, could very well leverage its popularity to expand Pico Interactive’s headset availability and compete directly with Facebook and its Oculus Division. Both the Pico Neo 3 and the Oculus Quest 2 have similar specifications and sell at similar price points. According to the International Data Corporation, a market research company, Pico Interactive was the third biggest headset manufacturer in shipments behind DPVR in second place and Oculus in first. ByteDance seems invested in the XR space, creating its own AR platform and now acquiring a VR headset manufacturer.
With competition in the VR space mounting, the future of robust and affordable consumer headsets is bright. While it’s unfortunate that social media companies are at the forefront of adoption, there is still competition from startups like Decagear that offer an alternative option. The bright side is that with more adoption of VR in the mainstream, it will only become more familiar and offer more reason for Enterprise to more widely adopt the technology.
