Samsung confirms Galaxy Note10 and 10+ won't work with its Gear VR headset
Jay Peters / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Gear VR has been Samsung's phone-based VR play since the Galaxy S6-era headset refresh in 2015, when it also shipped a dedicated browser and WebVR support for the platform. But Samsung has been hedging since at least 2016, when reports emerged of work on a standalone VR headset that wouldn't need a phone at all.
Confirming the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ won't dock into Gear VR — right after FCC images showed the new flagships dropping the headphone jack — effectively ends the headset's upgrade path on Samsung's own flagship line, months before coverage of Google shutting down Daydream would declare phone-based VR all but dead.
First-order effects
- Note10 and Note10+ buyers lose any route into Gear VR content, stranding an installed base of headset owners whose accessory now tops out at older Galaxy models.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's VR investment shifts fully toward the standalone headset direction it was already exploring, while developers targeting Gear VR face a shrinking addressable device pool with no new flagships arriving.
Third-order effects
- With both Samsung and Google abandoning phone-dock VR, the entry-level on-ramp to VR that ran through $1,000 smartphones disappears, leaving standalone and tethered headsets as the only viable form factors.
The trend: Smartphone-based VR is being wound down by the same handset makers that popularized it, as their roadmaps move to standalone headsets and away from phone-as-compute accessories.