• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, February 6, 2017

Virtual and augmented realities are moving well into the millions.

That’s millions of units and millions of dollars.

A new forecast now projects VR headsets to grow more than 50% a year for the next four years.

Taking virtual and augmented reality together, the number of headsets will grow by more than eight times from last year to 2021, according to the report by Semico Research.

One of the big drivers of VR headset sales was all the marketing and promotion of the devices during the holiday shopping season.

Indeed, a quarter (25%) of consumers said they had tried virtual reality after the holidays, compared to 5% just a few months earlier, according to a recent study by ReportLinker. That survey of 700 U.S. adults found that 83% of consumers had a positive attitude toward virtual reality.

Another market driver was the Sony PlayStation VR headset launched in October, selling somewhere around 750,000 units globally be the end of last year, according to sales tabulations by SuperData Research.

Sony ended up capturing more than a third (35%) of virtual reality revenue, based on the Semico report.

VR and AR forecasts vary somewhat, but all are relatively high.

For example, IDC projects that VR headset shipments will grow to 61 million units globally within three years. That would be up from about 10 million headsets shipped last year.

The market for augmented reality will grow to $44 billion within four years, according to a recent forecast by Technavio.

And then there’s the longer view, with Citi’s Global Perspectives and Solutions Group forecasting VR and AR sales to be in the $2 trillion range by 2035, with AR growing 68% annually between the next three to eight years.

Collectively, these reports have the VR/AR marketplace value going from millions to billions to trillions.That’s a big reality.