Christmas day is an interesting day in the App Store (and on Google Play). In addition to a bunch of Santa apps that rise to the top of the charts for a short period, we also get a glimpse into the popularity of tech gadgets that require an app to operate.
Quest, Meta's virtual reality headset, has been one of the hottest gifts in recent years, and using app downloads as a proxy for unit sales, we can get an idea for just how popular VR was this holiday season.
Hint: It beat last year, but...
According to our estimates, Meta Quest, the app necessary to set up a new VR headset, crossed 2M downloads in December. That's the first year downloads crossed the 2M mark.
This should be good news for VR, especially for Meta which suffered a lot in 2022. But it isn't exactly.
While high, well, highest, those downloads are just a teeny tiny higher than 2021's figures, which our estimates put at 1.97M, just a few hundreds shy of this new total. This means demand hasn't really grown. Maybe a bit, but when compared to the more than 100% growth Meta saw between 2020 and 2021, this new record seems more like bad news.
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