By XIAO Fang
One month after Bytedance transferred almost everyone out of VR business Pico with poor sales of the Pico 4 headset - currently selling at a loss of around 500 yuan - the launch of Pico 5 has been canceled.
At the beginning of the year, Pico lowered its VR device sales target in 2023 to around 500,000 units, half of the previous goal. But sales are going to come up very short of that. Pico ceased its aggressive market strategy at the beginning of this year, which had previously enabled Pico to dominate a significant portion of the domestic market.
The Swan project, inspired by Apple's Vision Pro headset set, continues. Currently in the conceptual stage, the possibility of it becoming commercially operational in the short term is considered low.
Pico CEO ZHOU Hongwei has explained the downsizing in internal communications: "The VR industry is currently in a very early stage. Previously, we were more optimistic about the industry and market development than it has actually progressed."
