By Aidan Sowa, CEO and Founder, Frontier Industries | October 2026
In 1968 a Harvard engineer hung a headset from the ceiling and called it the Sword of Damocles, because the display was too heavy to wear and too promising to drop. Your market still lives in that sentence. The technology convinces everyone who tries it and almost nobody who reads about it. IDC recorded headset shipments falling 28.1 percent in the second quarter of 2024 (IDC, 2024). Hiring PR for a product that cannot be photographed is a specific craft. This guide explains it.
| Number | What it measures |
|---|---|
| 1.1 million | AR and VR headsets shipped in Q2 2024, down 28.1 percent year on year, IDC |
| Over 1,000 dollars | Average selling price of headsets in early 2024, IDC |
| 41.4 percent | Forecast shipment growth for 2025, IDC |
I Discrimen
A demo is not coverage, and coverage is not belief
Every PR category has a translation problem; this one is absolute. A journalist can describe a phone camera and the reader already owns the reference. Nobody owns the reference for presence. So the currencies separate cleanly here: the demo, where belief is created in ninety seconds; coverage, which can only report that belief exists; and the purchase, which for enterprise buyers follows pilot results and for consumers follows a friend with a headset.
Agencies that do not understand the hierarchy will sell you coverage volume and call it traction. The firm you want builds a demo operation, loaner fleets, event presence, creator studios, enterprise pilot theatre, and treats press as the distribution system for invitations. Ask any candidate how many headsets they can put on faces in a quarter, and through which rooms. That number, defended, is the most honest metric in this entire guide.
The neighbouring guides in the resources library, especially gaming technology and consumer technology, share parts of this problem at lower intensity.
You cannot screenshot presence. You can only schedule it, staff it and insure it, which is why this hiring decision is closer to choosing a touring company than choosing a copywriter.
II Machina
The machine is platform gravity, showcase floors and a tiny specialist press
Three forces allocate attention in immersive technology. The first is platform gravity: IDC put Meta at 60.5 percent share of headset shipments in Q2 2024, with Apple entering at premium prices and pushing the category average selling price above 1,000 dollars (IDC, 2024). Your story is told inside someone else platform story, on their storefront, their developer conference and their hardware cycle. An agency that cannot plan around platform announcements will watch your launch get stepped on twice a year.
The second force is experiential media: a specialist press corps, UploadVR, Road to VR and a handful of creators with proper capture rigs, whose mixed reality footage is the closest thing the internet has to a demo. The third is enterprise proof: training, design review and remote assistance deployments, where buyers read vertical trade press and ask for measured outcomes, not wonder.
IDC forecast the market growing from 6.7 million units in 2024 to 22.9 million in 2028 (IDC, 2024), after a flat to down year. Selling into a dip with a credible growth path is a distinct communications posture: no hype, all evidence. The post metaverse hangover means journalists arrive sceptical and priced to doubt you, which is an advantage if your firm knows how to feed sceptics.
Hype spent this industry credibility. Evidence is the only currency it accepts now.
III Exemplum
The training platform that stopped pitching the future
Consider a composite enterprise VR training company with strong pilot data and a weak story. Its first agency chased the metaverse narrative in national business media, winning thoughtful features that produced no pipeline, because plant managers and safety directors do not buy training systems from trend pieces.
The second firm rebuilt around proof and rooms. It placed measured results, injury reduction, time to competency, in the vertical titles the buyers read, built a demo roadshow through industry conferences with the hardware on faces, and gave the specialist VR press early builds to capture properly. Coverage volume fell. Pilot requests tripled within two quarters, because every asset answered the buyer actual question: what happens in my facility, in numbers?
The consumer mirror of this pattern is the games and apps dynamic covered in the gaming technology guide: verdicts form where the dedicated audience actually gathers. Muck Rack found the journalists PR teams pitch most overlap by only 2 percent with those AI engines cite most (Muck Rack, 2025); in a niche this small, the cited layer and the room that matters are nearly the same handful of names.
Wonder is a demo outcome. It is not a message.
IV Damnum
The cost of hype in this market is a credibility overdraft with a long memory
Price the downside. This industry carries scar tissue from a decade of overclaim: platform launches that promised new realities and shipped expensive demos, a rebrand that consumed a giant credibility, and enterprise pilots that died quietly in drawers. Journalists maintain the ledger personally, and a firm that adds your name to it with inflated claims will cost you years, because the specialist press is small enough that everyone remembers everything.
Shipments fell 67.4 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2024 as the market transitioned between categories (IDC, 2024). In a contracting quarter, scrutiny per claim rises. There are also physical stakes competitors in software do not face: comfort, motion sickness, eye strain and child safety are legitimate reporting topics, and privacy questions around cameras and eye tracking in homes and workplaces attract regulator attention on several continents. Your agency needs the literacy to brief on all of it without flinching or hand waving.
The talent cost compounds quietly. Engineers and designers in this field are scarce and mission driven; they read the specialist press to choose employers, and they can smell a hype shop client list from the coverage. Weak PR taxes your roadmap through your hiring funnel.
In a small industry with a long memory, every claim is a loan. Shipments are the repayment schedule.
V Genus
The species split is consumer spectacle versus enterprise evidence
| Agency type | Strength in VR and AR | Where it breaks | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immersive specialist boutique | Specialist press trust, demo operations, capture craft | Small scale, thin corporate bench | Studios, headset challengers, content platforms |
| Enterprise B2B specialist | Vertical proof, pilot storytelling, buyer fluency | Consumer launch weakness | Training, design and industrial AR firms |
| Consumer technology agency | Retail and reviewer reach | Underestimates the demo problem | Accessories and consumer content |
| Global network practice | Platform scale events, multi region roadshows | Expensive, hype prone partners | Platform holders and major manufacturers |
| Games PR boutique | Creator and community craft | Enterprise blindness | Game studios and social VR |
The discriminating test is the capture question: show me footage your team produced or placed that made someone understand an experience. Mixed reality capture is a technical discipline, framing, latency, real hands, honest field of view, and the specialist press can tell in seconds whether a firm respects it. A team that sends flat trailers for an immersive product has told you it does not.
The second test is platform realism. Ask how the firm schedules around the dominant platform calendar and storefront featuring. The answer should include dates, embargo tiers and a fallback plan, not admiration.
Hire the firm that sells tickets to the demo, not adjectives about it.
VI Regio
Juries: the specialist critic, the enterprise pilot owner, the platform curator and the sceptical CFO
Segment by who must believe what. The specialist critic must believe your experience is genuinely new, and grades you against everything in their headset library. The enterprise pilot owner must believe your measured outcome survives their environment, and reads vertical case evidence almost exclusively. The platform curator decides storefront and showcase visibility, which in a platform market is distribution itself. The consumer early adopter believes friends and creators, in that order.
A fifth jury stands behind enterprise deals: the finance and safety officers who kill pilots after the demo high fades. Their questions are comfort data, hygiene protocols for shared devices, accessibility, data handling for eye and room mapping, and total cost per trained employee. Agencies that prepare those answers as publishable artefacts keep pilots alive; agencies that treat the demo as the finish line watch deals die in procurement.
Geography matters through the platform lens. IDC taxonomy now separates mixed reality and extended reality as distinct categories with different regional strengths (IDC, 2024), and a firm fluent only in the North American consumer story will misread smart glasses momentum in Asia entirely.
Five juries, and four of them cannot be reached by a press release.
VII Occasio
The opening is the category reset, the glasses form factor and enterprise boredom
Openings in a trough are better than openings at a peak, because the story is unwritten. IDC expects shipments to return to strong growth, forecasting 41.4 percent for 2025 as prices ease and new devices arrive (IDC, 2024). Category definitions are being rebuilt in public, mixed reality, extended reality, AI glasses, and the firms that teach journalists the new vocabulary get quoted as its authors.
The enterprise opening is boredom, profitably. Training, onboarding and design review are unglamorous budgets with measurable returns, and their trade press is hungry for documented results while consumer media chases spectacle. A firm that builds your evidence library there owns the segment conversation for years. Muck Rack reports 40 percent of journalists value original data most in a pitch (Muck Rack, 2024); a deployment dataset with injury, time or rework numbers is the strongest asset this industry can mint.
The third opening is the creator capture studio: as headsets add better passthrough and capture tools, the firms that help creators produce honest, watchable footage become distribution partners to the whole category. Build that capability before your launch quarter, not during it.
Teach the new words and the market cites you for the definitions.
VIII Structura
Structure is a demo operation with logistics, spares and insurance, run like a touring company
This is the rare PR market where physical operations decide outcomes. A structured firm runs loaner fleets with tracked units and spare budgets, maintains capture rigs and the people who operate them, staffs conference floors with demo trained staff rather than spokespeople, and knows the unglamorous details: play space dimensions, hygiene turnover, battery rotation, accessibility settings. Ask for the operations plan behind a past launch, not the coverage book. The plan reveals the firm; the book reveals the market mood that quarter.
The equaliser follows directly. None of these assets require network scale. A fifteen person specialist with two capture rigs and a disciplined loaner programme outperforms a network that treats headsets as props for a photo opportunity. What scale buys is geographic roadshow reach, and even that can be assembled with partners for a launch season.
Probe the failure stories. Every immersive launch includes a public demo that glitched. Ask what theirs was and what changed in the runbook. The answer predicts your conference season with unusual precision.
In this market, logistics is not support for the story. Logistics is the story delivery mechanism itself.
IX Consilium
Score finalists on demo throughput, capture craft and enterprise evidence
One procedural demand before the scorecard: attend a demo the finalist runs for someone else, or have them run yours cold. Sit at the back and watch the unglamorous minutes, the fitting, the guardian setup, the moment the experience stutters and the staffer recovers. That twenty minutes contains more selection information than a two hour credentials meeting, because it shows you the firm as your audience will meet it: under mild pressure, with hardware misbehaving, in front of a sceptic who did not want to be there. Firms that tour well hire well. Score what you saw, not what you were told.
| Criterion | Weight | What good looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demo operation and throughput | 25 | Numbers with rooms and dates | Coverage only metrics |
| Capture and content craft | 20 | Footage that respects the medium | Flat trailers for immersive products |
| Specialist press standing | 15 | UploadVR tier relationships with history | General gadget list |
| Enterprise proof production | 20 | Named deployments with measured outcomes | Pilot announcements without results |
| Platform calendar fluency | 10 | Dates, tiers, fallback plans | Schedules in a vacuum |
| Safety and privacy literacy | 10 | Briefs comfort and data questions fluently | Changes the subject |
Decision rule by situation:
| Your situation | Choose | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer headset or content launch | Immersive specialist boutique | Corporate generalist |
| Enterprise training or industrial AR | Enterprise B2B specialist with demo craft | Consumer spectacle shop |
| Platform or major manufacturer programme | Network practice audited for specialist day team | Boutique beyond its roadshow reach |
| Smart glasses or extended reality play | Specialist tracking the new taxonomy, cross check the consumer technology guide | Firm still selling the old metaverse script |
How these profiles become engagements is set out in the public relations services overview, and the people accountable are on the industries team page.
X Quaesita
Questions immersive companies ask us
How do we get coverage for something journalists cannot try at their desks?
You ship the experience to them: loaner programmes with generous windows, pre configured demo paths, and capture assets for those who cannot record. The specialist press expects this machinery; its absence reads as lack of confidence in the product.
Is the enterprise market really more valuable for PR than consumer?
For most firms in this cycle, yes, because enterprise proof is publishable, measurable and cumulative, while consumer attention is rented weekly. The exceptions are platform scale consumer plays, which need the network machinery this guide describes.
How should we talk about the metaverse hangover?
Do not. Talk about the job the product does, the measured result, and the price. Journalists will supply the context; a firm that briefs against the word instead of for the work wastes the interview.
What does a realistic demo target look like per quarter?
It depends on your rooms, but demand a number with a plan behind it: conferences, press tours, creator studios, enterprise site visits. Vague commitments to buzz are how budgets evaporate in this category.
Can PR fix a comfort or motion sickness problem?
It can ensure your data, your settings guidance and your honest limitations reach reviewers before their sessions, which changes verdicts materially. It cannot fix the optics. Any firm blurring that line will eventually do it with your name attached.
How do privacy questions about cameras and eye tracking get handled?
With specifics: what is captured, where it processes, what leaves the device, and the controls a user or an IT department holds. Prepare those answers as standing documents, reviewed by counsel, before the first enterprise pilot.
What belongs in monthly reporting?
Demo throughput, pilot progression, specialist verdicts, capture asset performance and share of category definition coverage. Reach figures from general media go in the appendix where they belong.
XI Notae
How this guide was built, and its limits
Market figures are from IDC Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker releases through 2024, reported by IDC and trade press and named at each use. Journalist behaviour data is from Muck Rack research of 2024 and 2025. Category definitions follow IDC revised taxonomy, which separates mixed reality and extended reality from virtual reality.
Limits, stated plainly: this is a young, volatile market where a single product launch can rewrite annual shipment figures, and forecasts in the text are IDC estimates, not outcomes. Specialist press structures and platform programmes change with each hardware cycle. Treat the operational tests here as durable, because they concern craft, and recheck every market number at the moment you plan.
XII Incipe
If your product must be tried to be believed, hire the firm that runs the trying
Frontier Industries builds immersive programmes around demo operations: loaner fleets, capture craft, enterprise evidence and a specialist press map maintained between launches. If that is the machinery your launch needs, start on the engagement page or call 401-219-4207. Bring your next conference date; the runbook conversation starts there.
Sources
1. Mobile World Live, IDC Issues Gloomy AR and VR Device Outlook for 2024: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/devices/idc-issues-gloomy-ar-vr-device-outlook-for-2024/ 2. Communications Today, IDC Forecasts Strong Shipment Growth for AR and VR Headsets: https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/idc-forecasts-strong-shipment-growth-for-ar-vr-headsets/ 3. Broadcast and CableSat, IDC Forecasts Strong Shipment Growth for AR and VR Headsets: https://www.broadcastandcablesat.co.in/idc-forecasts-strong-shipment-growth-for-ar-vr-headsets/ 4. EMSNow, Mixed and Extended Reality Headsets to Drive Strong Growth Through 2028, According to IDC: https://www.emsnow.com/mixed-and-extended-reality-headsets-to-drive-strong-growth-through-2028-according-to-idc/ 5. Silicon UK, The Outlook for AR and VR Headsets Is Expected to Improve, According to IDC: https://www.silicon.co.uk/press-release/the-outlook-for-ar-vr-headsets-is-expected-to-improve-as-mixed-reality-and-extended-reality-gains-acceptance-according-to-idc 6. Business Wire, Mixed and Extended Reality Headsets to Drive Strong Growth Through 2028, IDC release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240916109658/en/ 7. Ericsson, Ericsson Mobility Report November 2024, immersive technology definitions and forecasts: https://ewstest.ericsson.com/en/SysSiteAssets/reports-papers/mobility-report/documents/2024/ericsson-mobility-report-november-2024.pdf 8. The Coyote, Why Relevance Beats Reach When Pitching Journalists, Muck Rack findings: https://ledecoyote.com/media-pitch-relevance-journalists/ 9. Sword and the Script, Media Pitching, on Muck Rack journalist survey findings: https://www.swordandthescript.com/2025/09/media-pitching/ 10. Media Copilot, AI Is Changing Which Journalists Matter to PR, Muck Rack comparison: https://mediacopilot.ai/ai-is-changing-which-journalists-matter-to-pr/