Yeah, and unlike gaming VR, I think mobile VR has the potential to truly catch on and spread. It's cheap (80$ vs. 600$+), it's easy to use (no wires or crazy rig needed), and you can use it anywhere (lay on the bed, use outside).
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that there is a hell of a lot of hype about VR at the moment, and not just in the enthusiast circles. So if someone can lower that barrier to entry to a reasonable level where your semi-early adopters can partake and start showing off their gear at work and with friends then I think it is likely to see success.
I don't think there will be any shortage of content creation, and I also don't think the argument about available phones is too valid. The current race that is underway with phone creators to develop the next best phone paired with the obsession of people to own the best phone will make sure a lot of people are walking around with VR ready phones in no time.
I hope this wasn't completely incoherent, but this conversation also reminds me of this : https://xkcd.com/1497/
No one will ever buy a 600-800$ VR headset for anything else than using it in VR. And that's the ONLY thing it will be used for.
The phone will be used every single day of your life for doing everything, from messaging people, watching videos, browsing the web, playing games, etc.
If you want this to be a fair comparison, then also include the 1000$+ gaming rig you'd need for the VR headset to work.
The reason GearVR exists is because your average android phone cannot perform well enough to provide a good VR experience. It requires specific engineering that would not otherwise be done for the common day to day smartphone use cases. Daydream is meant to be a holistic solution to that problem. I guess it sounds to me like you're disappointed that nobody can wave a magic wand and make current android devices VR capable, but sadly enough it does require better sensors, thermal characteristics, and general graphics performance than what any off the shelf android phone can do today.
There are a lot of ways google could have executed on the idea "how do we try to make mobile VR take off" that would have had major problems. The way they've actually done it to me seems the best of all possible worlds. You can question if mobile VR is a viable avenue to mass market adoption of VR, but if you assume that's a goal worth persuing, then critique daydream from there. For me, it certainly seems to me, based on raw numbers alone, to have the highest potential. But even if it turns out to be a poor concept, I can't imagine a better way to execute on trying to prove if it is than what they've done here.