A million people used Gear VR last month according to Oculus

Oculus’ head of mobile, Max Cohen, told a press conference in San Francisco on Tuesday that a million people used the Gear VR headset last month. The Gear VR is the product of a software partnership with Oculus, which is owned by Facebook, and Samsung, the manufacturer of the hardware. The figure has apparently surpassed Oculus’ expectations for the head-mounted display.

Unfortunately, the figure wasn’t given any context: how it was tracked or whether these were first-time, one-off visitors or regular consumers of Gear VR content. No specific demographics were provided either and Cohen said the company did not know these details. With the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge bundling a Gear VR headset for free with pre-orders, with many arriving in late March and early April, you know a significant chunk of the quoted figure is likely made up of these folks.

At the very least, Cohen claimed the metric proves it is no longer only “early adopters” using the Gear VR. It may be some time before we know detailed figures about regular consumers of VR content across the various platforms and hardware options. But with Google reportedly about to announce the Android VR platform and the Vive and Rift hitting shelves at last, we can only expect the interest in VR – both from consumers and developers – to rise dramatically as the year progresses.

Which VR solution do you think will have the biggest impact: Cardboard, Gear VR or the high-end options?