Google has recently halted all sales of its Daydream View VR headset, siting that they don’t see a future for phone based VR.

This is however short term future they talk about.
Long-term future however there is still optimism, they just feel VR is still 7-10 years away from being marketable.
The BBC said “It’s been an important part of our charter commitment to promote technological innovation and maintain a leading role in research and development which benefits the whole industry. The VR Hub had funding for two years so is now wrapping up its production and commissioning”.
However this isn’t the end and in fact more investment and time is going to be spent in AR for now.
Lets be honest I’m not surprised about this, I’ve never met anyone yet who likes to strap their phone into a headset. For me it was always a gimmick. If VR is going to finally take off, the technology NEEDS to be in the headset and not reliant upon a consumers phone.