• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 22, 2020

Continuing to expand its VR strategy, Facebook just announced the general availability of its Oculus for Business platform.

In testing since last year, the enterprise platform retails for $1,000, which is double the starting price of Facebook’s Oculus Quest VR headset. The additional cost gives businesses enterprise software, licenses and support.

The platform is built on Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise collaboration platform.

Commercial partners include the Johnson & Johnson Institute, which uses VR to train medical professionals, and Nestlé Purina Petcare, while relies on the technology to improve remote collaboration and retail planning.

In the wake of the pandemic, companies (including Facebook) are rethinking the way that they do business. Among other implications, more companies might resort to VR as an alternative to in-person collaborations.

In May, IDC estimated that worldwide spending on commercial VR would increase from $4.5 billion in 2019 to $7.1 billion this year.

More broadly, Facebook’s VR strategy appears to be bearing fruit.

In fact, the company just re vealed it sold about $100 million in VR content, over the past year. Yet, VR still remains a niche market for the tech titans investing money in it.  

And, while the pandemic has accelerated certain technology trends, some analysts don’t believe virtual reality will be one of them.

“The problem is, we haven’t worked out what you would do with a great VR device that isn’t a game (or some very niche industrial application), and it’s not clear that we will,” technology analyst Benedict Evans wrote in a recent blog post.

“We’ve had five years of experimental projects and all sorts of content has been tried, and nothing other than games has really worked,” Evans added.

To accelerate adoption in the business community, Facebook has focused on making Oculus for Business easier to integrate into company’s existing IT infrastructures.