Bulletins

Facebook has sold 4 million Quest 2 headsets in the US, recall docs reveal

The company may have sold as many as 8 million units worldwide, according to one estimate.

Quest 2
Is VR finally going mainstream?
Image: Facebook / Protocol

The Quest 2 really is selling like hotcakes: Facebook has sold "about 4 million" units of the device in the U.S. to date, according to a recall filing from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The company's Canadian sales amount to 172,600 units to date, according to the same document. A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook began a voluntary recall of the Quest 2's Face shield earlier this week due to a risk of skin irritation from the headset's foam face shield. As part of that recall, the company is making silicon coverings available to existing Quest 2 owners, and also including the silicon cover in new units sold going forward.

Facebook has yet to officially announce any sales numbers for the Quest 2, leaving analysts to sift through the company's earnings to get clues about its VR business. In the second quarter of this year, Facebook booked $497 million of non-advertising revenue, which executives primarily attributed to sales of the VR headset.

The new recall disclosure still doesn't detail how many Quests the company has sold worldwide, but Virtual Desktop developer Guy Godin said on Twitter this week that U.S. consumers account for about half of all his software sales, leading him to estimate that global Quest 2 sales could be around 8 million units.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that just one part of the Quest 2 is being recalled, not the entire headset.

 Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (Twitter, Mastodon) used to be a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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