LYON, FRANCE—Virtual reality manufacturers truly started to make a push of their products and offerings back in the fall and over the holiday season, and now it seems their efforts are paying off with potential customers. In a new survey conducted by ReportLinker during the first week of January, customers’ awareness of VR technology has seen a big boost, and Samsung might have moved to the head of the pack in terms of providers.
According to the survey, 31 percent of respondents, nearly double from the last conducted survey in September 2016, said they were very familiar with virtual reality, while the number of people who said they never heard of it dropped from 26 percent to 12 percent. Overall, 83 percent of Americans said that they viewed VR in a positive light, which was an 11 percent increase from the 2016 survey.
While a number of different companies have come out with VR technology over the last year, Samsung’s technology seems to be the one garnering the most eyes. When asked what VR brand first came to mind for consumers, 28 percent said Samsung, more than double any other brand; 35 percent said none came to mind, but even that is a decline of 16 points from 2016. Meanwhile, 58 percent of respondents said they had at least heard of Samsung Gear. Other brands, like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard also saw significant increases in the amount of consumers who were aware of their technology.
And it’s not just the younger generation who are latching onto this new technology. Though Millennials were were among the early adopters for VR, older generations are now more positive about the technology, with 84 percent holding a positive view compared to 68 percent from the September report.
ReportLinker conducted this survey among 738 online respondents from the U.S. population.
