When will VR technology become mainstream?

There’s quite a bit of quantitative info here already, but I believe the qualitative side is lacking.

VR is booming in the GAMING industry. You mentioned mobile phones, which are not specifically for gaming. They have other functions of which gaming is a nice additional feature.

Before VR really hits the mainstream, we need it to provide mainstream functionality. Who will create the first VR phone? Will it be a physical product that has high-quality graphics to support VR applications? OR, will this phone just be an object in a VR environment?

I admit that’s a weird example, but if you really think about the question at hand, its about utility. VR has proven to invoke empathy with very profound effects on the viewer. That is an amazing capability, arguably one of the most significant improvements in media delivery to date. But how do we apply that function?

That begins the quest for adoption, how to take something that is so powerful and adopt it as part of every day life. Is VR only applicable for a set boundary of experiences, or can we have enough vision to make it an every-day-use application that drives adopters across the spectrum?

You’re onto the right track by comparing the projected growth with mobile phones, in that mobile created an extremely dramatic adoption pattern. VR has that same potential, and more, all we need are the visionaries who will create the applications that people cannot help BUT to use every single day.

What will those applications be?