VR technology to thrive in China amid tough competition

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to thrive in China, and competition will be fierce in 2016, according to a tech industry research company.

Vendors will ship 6.3 million virtual reality (VR) headsets worldwide in 2016, of which 40 percent will be to China, Canalys estimated in a report Thursday.

This week, numerous Chinese vendors are exhibiting VR headsets at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia 2016 from Wednesday to Friday in Shanghai.

DeePoon, Pico, Pimax and Idealens are attracting the most interest from consumers, Canalys said.

The Chinese market is highly fragmented, and vendors such as Huawei and DeePoon are moving quickly to form partnerships, Canalys said, adding VR companies need to move fast before international vendors, such as HTC, Oculus and Sony, get a foothold.

Barriers to entering the VR market have been lowered. VR headsets are overcoming the quality and performance issues of simple viewers such as Samsung's Gear VR and Google's Cardboard, the report said.

Competition is in the area of user experience, hardware quality and content, said Jason Low, an analyst with Canalys. Currently, there is no clear leader for VR content in China, Low said.

Though simple, inexpensive viewers appeal to many consumers, vendors must look to more advanced headsets, where the longer-term opportunity lies, Canalys said.

According to iiMedia Research, China's total VR market was worth 1.54 billion yuan (239 million U.S. dollars) in 2015. It is expected to exceed 5.6 billion yuan this year and 55 billion yuan by 2020. Endi