HTC sold 15,000 Vive VR headsets in less than 10 minutes

By Raymond Wong  on 
HTC sold 15,000 Vive VR headsets in less than 10 minutes
HTC updated its Vive headset, and it's one of the best VR experiences to date. Credit: Liz Pierson/Mashable

The HTC Vive virtual reality headset is off to a very, very good start.

Pre-orders for the $800 Vive opened on Monday and within the first 10 minutes HTC sold 15,000 units, according to Shen Ye, a VR product specialist at the company.

Woah, more than 15k units in less than 10min :o— Shen Ye (@shen) February 29, 2016

The first Vive headsets and controllers will ship on April 5. If you pre-order in the U.S. now, Vive headsets won't ship until May:

Mashable Image
Credit: HTC

Doing the math based on the $800 U.S. price (the Vive will cost £689 in the UK and €899 in Europe), HTC made $12 million off those 15,000 headsets. HTC may be struggling to sell smartphones, but it already looks like its gamble on virtual reality may have been worth it.

HTC's early success is good news for the budding VR industry, which is projected to worth $70 billion by 2020, according to TrendForce, a technology market research company.

Facebook-owned Oculus VR will launch its highly anticipated Oculus Rift on March 28 to the first pre-orderers. At $600, the Rift costs $200 less than the Vive. The Rift, however, doesn't come with the Vive's wand-like VR controllers and ships instead with an Xbox One controller. Oculus VR plans to ship its own Oculus Touch hand controllers later this year.

Wow, people really want Rifts. There must be a lot of lurkers in the VR community.— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016

We are experiencing insanely high load. Credit card processing is trying to stay livr under load from mass script kiddie fraud attempts.— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016

Though Facebook and Oculus VR haven't announced how many units of the Rift have been sold since pre-orders opened in early January, it should be a healthy amount as well. Pre-orders for the Rift now ship in June -- a good indicator that there is pent-up demand for VR.

BONUS: VirZoom review: I got sick pedaling this virtual reality fitness bike

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