According to a report from online marketplace discussion & information website, Apple has secretly created a new dedicated Virtual Reality team for VR headsets. The company might be working to take on Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens & some other VR headsets from different companies. The company is planning to expand it’s business and go beyond just iPhone, iPod & Mac devices. The company is thinking about future because nowadays more & more companies are entering in this space.
The Financial Times reports “Apple has assembled a large team of experts in virtual and augmented reality and built prototypes of headsets that could one day rival Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Microsoft’s HoloLens”
The company is set to hire & include hundreds of new persons from different fields, mainly those working for next generation of technology & equipment, “hundreds of staff from a series of carefully targeted acquisitions, as well as employees poached from companies that are working on next-generation headset technologies” .The Financial Times also notes that Apple bought Flyby media, a company working on a software that lets mobile devices “scan” real-world objects and add them to a virtual collection. This is the company that worked with Google for their Project Tango which we will see being real in later 2016 with Google’s partnership with Lenovo .They are working on a smartphone with this technology.
Tim Cook, chief executive also had quite positive approach towards this. He commented on it’s future saying “It is really cool and has some interesting applications”
We have seen many new patents that were revealed last year for Virtual Reality based devices. Apple was also asking newer generation of Engineers to “create high performance apps that integrate with virtual reality systems for prototyping and user testing“.
There has been an increase in the number of hiring by Apple in last year. The company hired engineers from different institutions & firms. There was a Metaio deal also in the company which also got many new employees. The company also hired Mr. Browman, a computer science professor from Virginia Tech. Along with these recruitment, Apple also recruited lots of former employuees from Lytro, a Silicon Valley based company that launched first practical & usable camera to use “light field” optics to capture a scene, as well as Microsoft’s Hololens team.
There isn’t any official info about what company is working on & what will we see in future from Apple. The device may be in competition to Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens or Samsung Galaxy VR headsets, Google’s cardboard based VR headsets or OnePlus’s VR headsets.
