Welcome to Lowpass! This week: What to expect from this fall’s VR hardware announcements, and the latest data on streaming and the bandwidth we all use for it.

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All the headsets coming this fall

The VR industry is gearing up for a couple of very busy months: Depending on how you count, we could see up to five major VR headset releases this fall. These include a budget-priced Meta Quest that is poised to bring mixed reality to the masses, new devices from Pico and HTC as well as a collaboration between Samsung and Google that marks the search engine giant’s reentry into the immersive computing space.

For this week’s edition of Lowpass, I decided to take a closer look at what we know about each of these headsets, what their impact on the market will be, and how this new wave of devices foreshadows what’s to come in 2025 and beyond.

ByteDance’s new Pico 4 Ultra up close. First out of the gate with a hardware announcement was Pico, the Chinese VR startup that was acquired by TikTok owner ByteDance in 2021. Following reports of internal struggles and scrapped plans for a new Pico 5 headset, the company announced a revamped version of its existing Pico 4 headset this week.

The new Pico 4 Ultra headset (pictured above) features a faster processor than its predecessor (the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, which first debuted in Meta’s Quest 3 headset last year), more storage and faster Wifi, as well as improved mixed reality passthrough, thanks to two 32 MP color passthrough cameras. These two camera sensors also make it possible to use the headset as a mixed reality capture device, similar to the Apple Vision Pro. It goes on sale in China next month for ¥4300 CNY, which equals about $600.

The Pico 4 Ultra’s impact: Spec-wise, the Pico 4 Ultra matches what Quest 3 has to offer, and even surpasses Meta’s headset in some regards. However, it’s unlikely that the Pico 4 Ultra will make major headwinds in the West. Following the acquisition by ByteDance, Pico had ambitious plans for an international expansion. The company even paid some VR developers five-figure sums to port their games and experience to Pico hardware. Facing low sales and high marketing costs, Pico never followed through on those plans, and has yet to start selling either version of the Pico 4 in the U.S. 

However, the Pico 4 Ultra could help Pico expand its market share in China, especially as the company leans more heavily into mixed reality. Apple’s Vision Pro went on sale in China this summer for ¥29,900 CNY, which allows Pico to position the 4 Ultra as a much more affordable mixed reality competitor.

Meta’s Quest 3s is coming soon. Meta is expected to announce its new budget-priced Quest 3s headset at its Connect conference next month. Thanks to a number of leaks, we already have a pretty good idea of what the headset will offer: The Quest 3s will likely use the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor as the Quest 3, and also offer color pass-through for mixed reality experiences. It will use cheaper lenses and offer a slightly lower resolution, which should help drive down the costs to an expected hardware price of around $300 – $200 below the current Quest 3 retail price.

The impact of the Quest 3s: Priced to sell, the Quest 3s could repeat what Quest 2 did in 2020: Move millions of units, and expand Meta’s market leadership in VR. More importantly, the device will bring mixed reality to many more consumers, and we can expect Meta to heavily market those features. It’s no accident that Laser Dance, one of the most-anticipated mixed reality games, was recently listed as “coming soon” on the Quest App Store …

HTC has something in store. The maker of the Vive line of VR headsets teased a new device last month. While the company’s video was light on details, there’s word that the new device will be powered by a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor and offer improved mixed reality capabilities.

The headset’s impact: HTC has struggled to stay relevant in consumer VR against Meta’s market power, and it’s unlikely that this new headset will change that. It’s more likely that the company will continue to focus on the enterprise market, and perhaps help bring mixed reality to location-based entertainment.

Google is vying for a comeback, with Samsung’s help. The two companies are expected to introduce a Samsung-made headset running Google’s Android XR platform in October. Unconfirmed leaks suggest the headset will use Sony-made micro-OLED displays with a resolution of 3,840 x 3,552 pixels per eye, which would be higher than those used in Apple’s Vision Pro. I’d take those reports with a grain of salt, but all signs do point to a premium-priced headset that aims to compete  more directly with the Vision Pro than the Meta Quest.

The impact: Some reports suggest that Samsung will only sell a developer version of its headset this year, and follow up with a consumer release in 2025. Either way, we shouldn’t expect this device to move huge numbers out of the gate. More significant is the longer-term impact: Google clearly is itching to reenter the market, if only to make sure that it will have a say about the future of Android in AR and VR. Given that Meta and many of its competitors use forked versions of Android for their hardware, conflict is almost unavoidable.

There’s always room for a dark horse. In addition to new devices from these major players, we’re also going to see new hardware from smaller companies like Immersed and Play For Dream, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on either of these selling large numbers. What I am paying attention to instead is Meta’s reported plan to introduce a version of the Quest 3s in China, with help from Tencent.

China is obviously a huge market, but it’s also been a challenging one for Western tech companies. Meta currently doesn’t have any presence in the country, and a successful partnership with Tencent could help the company beat Apple on an important turf: Thanks largely to the iPhone, Apple generated more than $72 billion in China in its fiscal 2023. That’s roughly one-fifth of the company’s total revenue for that year. 

There’s a reason China was one of the first international markets for Apple’s Vision Pro: If you want to win the race for the next major device after the smartphone, you might want to compete in the country with the most smartphone users in the world.

Streaming is surging — and eating up a lot of data

A couple of new data points out this week show how much our collective TV viewing habits have changed: First, Nielsen reported that streaming was responsible for 41.4 percent of all TV viewing in the U.S. in July.

Cable TV was a distant second, accounting for 26.7 percent, followed by broadcast TV with 20.3 percent. That’s astonishing, considering that just three years ago, cable TV still made up 40.1 percent of all TV viewing.

Then, OpenVault reported that the average U.S. broadband user now consumes a whopping 585.8 GB of data per month. That’s up around 10 percent from a year ago, and more than double of what broadband unsers consumed five years ago. The company, which analyzes broadband patterns for operators, estimates that 20 percent of all broadband subscribers will consume more than a terabyte of data per month this year.

Of course, video streaming isn’t the only culprit here. All those Zoom calls many of us do regularly from home, big video game downloads and other data-intensive applications also add up. But so does all that binging. Case in point: Netflix is telling its subscribers that watching 4K content can consume up to 7GB of data per hour.

What else

The binge-watch election. My latest story for Fast Company takes a look at political advertising in the age of streaming.

Sports streaming service Venu is on hold. Competitor Fubo was successful in getting a preliminary injunction against the joint venture, preventing a reportedly planned late August launch.

Apple Podcasts goes live on the web. The web app syncs with its native app siblings, making it easier for iPhone users to access their favorite podcasts on their work computer.

Chick-Fil-A is launch … a streaming service? And it’s not just licensed content either: The fast food chain is reportedly looking to produce original shows for its service.

Sonos won’t bring its old app back after all. Still dogged by the fallout from its app overhaul, Sonos is telling users that bringing back the old app isn’t an option.

Snap will show off new Spectacles next month. The company is preparing to launch a new AR version of its glasses for developers, according to The Verge.

Two out of three streaming viewers use free services. Free, ad-supported video services are growing in popularity with viewers — but many may use them to sample programs they ultimately pay for.

Redbox workers file another lawsuit against owners. The new lawsuit alleges that Redbox and its corporate parent didn’t file legally required WARN notifications before laying off the entire staff.

That’s it

Okay, I’d watch this: A long-in-the-making TV drama about The Pirate Bay is getting closer to a release. Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT has already put out a teaser. However, with no word on any international distribution deals, there’s a chance that many people will turn to … you guessed it … the subject of the show to watch it.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend !

And many thanks to Volumetrics for sponsoring this edition of Lowpass.