Sorry, kids. VR is not “the next iPhone”.
It have been told, personally, by several very enthusiastic young people that VR will be “the next internet” or “the next iPhone”. I disagree. As much as I love being part of the VR community, I think that making promises that we can’t keep is counterproductive. I believe that we are at the peak of the technology hype cycle, and that we should be prepared for a reality check.
VR is not like the internet at all. It is not an entirely new telecommunications protocol that will subsume all others. It does not allow information to be transmitted or accessed more easily. Transmit 3D models and environments, you say? That’s not VR. That’s the job of efforts like GLTF. Allow people to communicate inside virtual worlds? Again, not VR. That’s what online game developers have already been doing for years. VR is really just another application that could be internet-enabled. For something to be “the next internet”, it would have to disrupt the internet, like the internet disrupted (voice) telephone, fax, and cable TV. It would have to be something like a brain-computer interface that everyone is plugged into, turning all of mankind into some sort of hive mind.
Is VR the next iPhone? A huge part of the appeal of the smartphone is that it’s always with you, and that you can interact with it even when standing in line or on a bus. In theory you could take Google Cardbord, fold it, and make it fit in your pocket, alongside your smartphone. But to use it, you would still have to give up awareness of your surroundings. Wearables, perhaps Augmented Reality wearables like like Google Glass, are more likely to be the next iPhone. This is because the whole point of a wearable is that it is on your body all the time. (Of course, neither Google Glass nor the Apple Watch have become the next iPhone. That’s a discussion for another post.)
In conclusion, I think we have to manage our expectations. VR will be useful for some industrial, medical, and military applications. For consumers, I think that a room-scale setup like the HTC Vive will (in the best case scenario) be like the next PlayStation, not the next Internet. A Cardboard-like setup will the next ViewMaster (in fact, ViewMaster is now doing stuff with VR). But it won’t be the next iPhone.