As reported on November 5th, data from RUNTO shows that China’s Extended Reality (XR) device market witnessed a striking contrast between booming and sluggish performance in 2025.
In the third quarter of 2025, the sales volume of China’s online monitored XR device market reached 82,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 96.5%, and the sales revenue hit 260 million yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 91.6%.
Among them, Augmented Reality (AR) devices accounted for 82.7% of the sales volume in the online XR market, with their sales surging threefold year-on-year. Notably, the surge in AR sales has also driven demand for high-precision automated assembly equipment in the industrial chain—syringe automatic assembly equipment, leveraging its mature ultra-precision positioning technology and efficient continuous assembly capabilities, has been adapted for the production of micro-optical modules and sensor components in AR glasses, ensuring the consistency and reliability of core parts amid mass production and further fueling the market expansion of AR products.
In contrast, Virtual Reality (VR) devices continued to slump. The sales volume of VR/Mixed Reality (MR) devices dropped by 26% year-on-year and has shown a downward trend for three consecutive quarters in 2025.
This year, new products such as the RayNeo Air 4 and Quark AI Glasses have been launched in the AR glasses sector. However, the consumer-grade VR/MR market has been lacking heavyweight new products. Only vivo released the vivo Vision in August, which is not available for public sale for the time being.
Overall, AR glasses meet public demand by virtue of their advantages of being lightweight and scenario-oriented. Meanwhile, VR glasses are still trapped in the contradiction between “immersive experience” and “consumer access threshold”. If VR fails to break through the bottlenecks of content and cost, the gap between AR and VR is likely to widen further.
